The praise of folly, by Desiderius Erasmus

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY

THE

PRAISE or FOLLI

BY

DESIDEEIUS EEASMUS

Translated from the Latin. And containing
Holbein's Illustrations

LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO
GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON

1887

&

OIQ

PEEFATOEY DEDICATION,.

IN my late travels from Italy into England, that I
might not trifle away my time in the rehearsal of
old wives' fables. I thought it more pertinent to
employ my thoughts in reflecting upon some past
studies, or calling to remembrance several of those
highly learned, as well as smartly ingenious friends,
I had left behind, among whom you, dear SIB,* were
represented as the chief. And whose memory,
while absent at this distance, I respect with no less
a complacency than I was wont while present to
enjoy your more intimate conversation. Which last
afforded me the greatest satisfaction, I could possibly
hope for.

Having therefore resolved to be a doing, and
deeming that time improper for any serious concerns,

* Sir Thomas Mo6re.

PREFATORY DEDICATION.

I thought good to divert myself with drawing up
a panegyric upon Folly. How ! what maggot, says
you, put this in your head ? Why, the first hint,
Sir, was y,our. own surname of More, which in Greek,
comes as" hear the literal sound of the word as you
',y4urs&]?f ar&''dt,stant from the signification of it, and
that in all men's judgments is vastly wide. In the
next place, I supposed that this kind of sporting
wit would be by you more especially accepted of.
By you, Sir, that are wont with this sort o£j!ocose
tail}ery,_ such as, if I mistake not, is neither dull
nor impertinent, to be mightily pleased, and in
your ordinary converse to approve yourself a
Democritus junior. For truly, as you do from a
singular vein of wit very much dissent from the
common herd of mankind. 'So, by an incredible
affability and pliableness of temper, you have the
art of suiting your humour with all sorts of com-
panies. I hope therefore you will not only readily
accept of this rude essay as a token from your
friend ; but take it under your more immediate pro-
tection, as being dedicated to you, and by that
title adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered
as my own.

PREFATORY DEDICATION.

And it is a chance if there be wanting some
quarrelsome persons that will shew their teeth, and
pretend these fooleries are either too^buffoon-like for
a grave divine, or too satirical for a meek Christian.
And so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping
up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again
with a peevish snarling at all things. But those
who are offended at the lightness and pedantry of
this subject, I would have them consider that I do
not set myself for the first example of this kind,
but that the same has been oft done by many con-
siderable authors. For thus several ages since,
Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than 01
a war between the frogs and mice ; Virgil of a gnat
and a pudding-cake; and Ovid of a nut. Polycrates
commended the cruelty of Busiris ; and Isocrates,
who corrects him for this, did as much for the in-
justice of Glaucus. Favorinus extolled Thersites,
and wrote in praise of a quartan ague. Synesius •
pleaded in behalf of baldness ; and Lucian defended
a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deify-
ing of Claudius ; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt
Gryllus and Ulysses ; Lucian and Apuleius the
story of an ass. And somebody else records the last

PREFATORY DEDICATION.

will of a hog, of which St. Hierom makes mention.
So that if they please, let themselves think the
worst of me, and fancy to themselves that I was
all this while a playing at push-pin, or riding astride
on a hobby-horse.

For how unjust is it, if when we allow different
recreations to each particular course of life, we
afford no diversion to studies. Especially when
trifles may be a whet to more serious thoughts, and
comical matters may be so treated of, so that a
reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap
more advantage than from some more big and
stately' argument. And while one in a long winded
oration descants in commendation of rhetoric or
philosophy, another in a fulsome harangue sets forth
the praise of his nation, a third makes a zealous
invitation to a holy war with the Turks, another
confidently sets up for a fortune-teller, and a fifth
states questions upon mere impertinences. But as
nothing is more childish than to handle a serious
subject in a loose, wanton style, so is there nothing
more pleasant than so to treat of trifles, as to make
them seem nothing less than what their name im-
ports. As to what relates to myself, I must be

PREFATORY DEDICATION.

forced to submit to the judgment of others ; yet,
except that I am too partial to be judge in my own
case, I am apt to believe I have praised Folly in
such a mariner as not to have deserved the name
of fool for my pains.

To reply now to the objection of sj/dricalness.
Wits have been always allowed this privilege, that
they might be smart upon any transactions of life,
if so be their liberty did not extend to railing.
Which makes me wonder at the tender -eared
humour of this age, which will admit of no address
without the prefatory repetition of all formal titles.
Nay, you may find some so preposterously devout,
that they will sooner wink at the greatest affront
against our Saviour, than be content that a prince,
or a pope, should be nettled witlxthe lea^-joke^r
gird, especially injvvhat relates^ to their ordinary
customs. But he who so blames men's irregulari-
ties, as to lash at no one particular person by name^
does he, I say, seem to_car£_£0properly as to teach
and instruct ? And if so,
make any farther excuse ? Beside, he who in his
strictures points indifferently at allTTie^sBBms not
angry at one man3 but at all vices.

PREFATORY DEDICATION.

Therefore, if any singly complain they are par-
ticularly reflected upon, they do but betray their
own guilt, at least their cowardice. Saint Hierom
dealt in the same argument at a much freer and
sharper rate ; nay, and he did not sometimes re-
frain from naming the persons. Whereas I have
not only stifled the mentioning any one person, but
have so tempered my style, as the ingenious reader
will easily perceive! I aimed at diversion rather than
satirel] Neither did I so far imitate Juvenal, as to
rake into the sink of vices to procure a laughter,
rather thanj^Eeate- a h^arfcy-f^Jbt^rreriee. If there
be any one that after all remains yet unsatisfied,
let him at least consider that there may be good
use made of being reprehended by Folly, which
since we have feigned as speaking, we must keep
up that character which is suitable to the person
introduced.

But why do I trouble you, Sir, with this need-
less apology, you that are so peculiar a patron ; as,
though the cause itself be none of the best, you
can at least give it the best protection. Farewell.

THE PRAISE or FOLLY:

It is Folly Who Speaks.

|OW slightly soever I am esteemed in
the common vogue of the world, for I
well know how disingenuously Folly is
decried, even by those who are them-
selves the greatest fools, yet it is from my
influence alone that the whole universe receives jf
ho. ie Linen t of mirth and jollity. Of which this'
may be urged as a convincing argument, in that
as soon as I appeared to speak before this
numerous assembly all their countenances were
gilded over with a lively sparkling pleasantness.

10 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

You soon welcomed me with so encouraging a look,
you spurred me on with so cheerful a hum, that
truly in all appearance, you seemed now flushed
with a good dose of reviving nectar, when as
just before, you sate drowsy and melancholy, as
if you were lately come out of some hermit's cell.
But as it is usual, that as soon as the sun peeps
from her eastern bed, and draws back the curtains
of the darksome night ; or as when, after a hard
winter, the restorative spring breathes a more en-
livening air, nature forthwith changes her apparel,
and all things seem to renew their age ; so at
the first sight of me you all unmask, and appear
in more lively colours.

That therefore which expert orators can scarce
effect by all their little artifice of eloquence, to
wit, a raising the attentions of their auditors to
a composedness of thought, this a bare look from
me has commanded. The reason why I appear
in -'tbrs^DtidJand of --garb, you shall soon be in-
formed of, if for so short a while you will have
but the patience to lend me an ear. Yet not such
a one as you are wont to hearken with to your
reverend preachers, but as you listen withal to

!
I

^V-:;:^

UNIVERSITY

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 11

TTIOIIJJ^NIIIJ^ buffoona, arH Tn^rry-ft-yH-^wg ; in
short, such as formerly were fastened to Midas,
as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan.
For I am now in a humour to act awhile the
sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the v
drudgery of tyrannizing over ^chooLbo.ys, and teach
a more than womanish knack of brawling. But in
imitation of those ancient ones, who to avoid the
scandalous epithet of wise, preferred this title of
sophists ; the task of these was to celebrate the
worth of gods and heroes. Prepare therefore to be
entertained with a panegywer^et^riot upon Her-

cules, Solon, or any other grandee, kut^on myself,
that is, upon Folly.

AncnTere I value not their censure that pretend r?1
it is foppish and affected for any person to praise
himself. Yet let it be as silly as they please, if
they will but allow it needful : and indeed what is
more befitting than that Folly should be the trum-
pet of her own praise, and dance after her own
pipe ? For who can set me forth better than my-
self? Or who can pretend to be so well acquainted
with my condition ?

And yet further, I may safely urge, that all this

12 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

is no more than the same with what is done by
several seemingly great and wise men, who with a
new-fashioned modesty employ some paltry orator
or scribbling poet, whom they brihe_to_flatter them
with some high-flown character, that shall consist
ojlmere ites-and shams. And yet the persons thus
extolled shall bristle up, and, peacock-like, bespread
their plumes, while the impudent parasite magnifies
the pppr_ wretch to the-skiesj-and proposes him as a
complete pattern of all virtues, from each of which
he is yet as far distant as heaven itself from hell.
What is all this in the mean while, but the tricking
up of a daw . in stolen feathers ; a labouring to
change the black-a-moor's hue, and the drawing on
a pigmy's frock over the shoulders of a giant.

Lastly, I verify the old observation, that allows
him a right of praising himself, who has nobody
else to do it for him : for really, I cannot but admire
at that ingratitude, shall I term it, or blockishness
( of mankind, who when they all willingly pay to me
.] their utmost devoir, and freely acknowledge their
respective obligations. That notwithstanding this,
there should have been none so grateful or com-
plaisant as to have bestowed on me a coramenda-

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 13

tory oration, especially when there have not been
wanting such as at a great expense of sweat, and
loss of sleep, have in elaborate speeches, given high
encomiums to tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and

i vi i • CAV6M\ e. V o- ^.

such like trumperies.

I shall entertain you with a hasty and unpre-
meditated, but so much the more natural dis-
course. My venting it ex tempore, I would not
have you think proceeds from any principles of
vain glory by which ordinary orators square their
attempts, who, as it is easy to observe, when they
are delivered of a speech that has been thirty
years a conceiving, nay, perhaps at last, none of
their own, yet they will swear they wrote- it in
a great hurry, and upon very short warning.
Whereas the reason of my not being provided
beforehand is only because it was always my<
humour constantly to speak that which lies upper-
most.

^ Next, let no one be so fond as to imagine, that
I should so far stint my invention to the method
of other pleaders, as first to define, and then
divide my subject, i.e., myself. For it is equally
hazardous to attempt the crowding her within the

14 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

narrow limits of a definition, whose nature is of so
diffusive an extent, or to mangle and disjoin that,
to the adoration whereof all nations unitedly con-
cur. Beside, to what purpose is it to lay down a
definition for a faint resemblance, and mere shadow
of me, while appearing here personally, you may
view me at a more certain light ? And if your
eye-sight fail not, you may at first blush discern
me to be her whom the Greeks term MwpU, the
Latins stultitia.

But why need I have been so impertinent as to
have told you this, as if my very looks did not
sufficiently betray what I am ; or supposing any be
so credulous as to take me for some sage matron
or goddess of wisdom, as if a single glance from
me would not immediately correct their mistake,
while iny visage, the exact reflex of my soul, would
supply and supersede the trouble of any other
confessions. For I appear always in my natural
colours, and an unartificial dress, and never let my
face pretend one thing, and my heart conceal an-
other. Nay, and in all things I am so true to my
principles, that I cannot be so much as counter-
feited, even by those who challenge the name of

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 15

witsjj yet indeed are no better than jackanapes
tripped up in gawdy clothes, and asses strutting in
lions' skins ; and how cunningly soever they carry
it, their long ears appear, and betray what they are.
These in troth are very rude and disingenuous,
for while they apparently belong to my party, yet
among the vulgar they are so ashamed of my rela-
tion, as to cast it in others' dish for a shame and
reproach : wherefore since they are so eager to be
accounted wise, when in truth they are extremely
silly, what, if to give them their due, I dub them
with the title of wise fools. And herein they copy
after the example of some modern orators, who
swell to that proportion of conceitedness. as to
vaunt themselves for so many giants of eloquence,
if with a double-tongued fluency they can plead ;
indifferently for either side, and deem it a very
doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin
sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming
garnish they crowd in at a venture. And rather
than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will
furnish up a long scroll of old obsolete terms
out of some musty author, and foist them in,
to amuse the reader with, that those who under-

16 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

stand them may be tickled with the happiness of
being acquainted with them : and those who under-
stand them not, the less they know the more they
may admire. Whereas it has been always a
custom to those of our side to contemn and under-
value whatever is strange and unusual, while those
that are better conceited of themselves will nod
and smile, and prick up their ears, that they
may be thought easily to apprehend that, of
which perhaps they do not understand one word.
And so much for this ; pardon the digression, now
I return.

Of my name I have informed you, Sirs ; what
additional epithet to give you I know not, except
you will be content with that of most foolish ; for
under what more proper appellation can the god-
dess Folly greet her devotees ? But since there
are few acquainted with my family and original, I
will now give you some account of my extraction.
$ First then, my father was neither the chaos,
nor hell, nor Saturn, nor Jupiter, nor any of
those old, worn out, grandsire gods, but Plutus,
the, very same that, maugre Homer, Hesiod, nay,
in spite of Jove himself, was the primary father

3

I

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 17

of the universe. At whose alone beck, for all
ages, religion and civil policy, have been succes-
sively undermined and re-established ; by whose
powerful influence war, peace, empire, debates,
justice, magistracy, marriage, leagues, compacts,
laws, arts; I have almost run myself out of breath,
but in a word, all affairs of church and state, and
business of private .concern, are severally ordered
and administered. Without whose assistance all
the Poets' gang of deities, nay, I may be so bold
as to say the very major-domos of heaven, would
either dwindle into nothing, or at least be confined
to their respective homes without any ceremonies
of devotional address. Whoever he combats with
as an enemy, nothing can be armour-proof against
his assaults ; and whosoever he sides with as a
friend, may grapple at even hand with Jove, and
all his bolts.

Of such a father I may well brag ; and he begot
me, not of his brain, as Jupiter did the hag Pallas,
but of a pretty young nymph, famed for wit no less
than beauty v''/ And this was not done in dull wed-
lock, but what gave a greater pleasure, it was done
at a stolen moment, as we may modestly phrase it.

18 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

But to prevent your mistaking me, I would have
you understand that my father was not that
Plutus in Aristophanes, old, dry, withered, sapless
and blind ; but the same in his younger and brisker
days, and when his veins were more impregnated,
and the heat of his youth somewhat higher in-
flamed by a chirping cup of nectar, which he had
just before drank very freely of, at a merry-meeting
of the gods.

//'And now presuming you may be inquisitive after
my birth-place, the quality of the place we are born
in, being now looked upon as a main ingredient of
gentility. I was born neither in the floating Delos,
nor on the frothy sea, nor in any of these privacies,
where too forward mothers are wont to retire for
undiscovered delivery. But in the fortune islands,
where all things grow without the toil of hus-
bandry, wherein there is no drudgery, no distem-
pers, no old age, where in the fields grow no
daflbdills, mallows, onions, pease, beans, or such
kind of trash, but there give equal divertisement to
our sight and smelling, rue, all-heal, bugloss, mar-
joram, herb of life, roses, violets, hyacinth, and such
like fragrances as perfume the gardens of Adonis.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 19

And being born amongst these delights, I did not,
like other infants, come crying into the world, but
perked up, and laughed immediately in my mother's
face./ And there is no reason I should envy Jove
for having a she-goat to his nurse, since I was more
creditably suckled by two jolly nymphs ; the name
of the first drunkenness, one of Bacchus's offspring,
the other ignorance, the daughter of Pan ; both
which you may here behold among several others of
my train and attendants, whose particular names, if
you would fain know, I will give you in short.
^/This, who goes with a mincing gait, and holds
up her head so high, is Self-Love. She that looks
so spruce, and makes such a noise and bustle, is
Flattery. That other, which sits hum-drum, as if
she were half asleep, is called ^r^etfulness. She
that leans on her elbow, and sometimes yawningly
stretches out her arms, is Laziness. This, that
wears a plighted garland of flowers, and smells
so perfumed, is Pleasure. The other, which ap-
pears in so smooth a skin, and pampered-up
flesh, is Sensuality. She that stares so wildly,
and rolls about her eyes, is Madness. As to
those two gods whom you see playing among

20 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

the lasses, the name of the one is Intemperance,
the other SoujidJSleep. By the help and service
of this retinue I bring all things under the verge
of my power, lording it over the greatest kings
and potentates. /

You have now heard of my descent, my edu-
cation, and my attendance ; that I may not be
taxed as presumptuous in borrowing the title of
a goddess, I come now in the next place to ac-
quaint you what obliging favours I everywhere
bestow, and how largely my jurisdiction extends :
for if. as one has ingenuously noted, to be a god
is no other than to be a benefactor of mankind :
and if they have been thought deservedly deified
who have invented the use of wine, corn, or any
other convenience for the well-being of mortals,
why may not I justly bear the van among the
whole troop of gods, who in all, and toward all,
exert an unparalleled bounty and beneficence ?

For instance, in the first place, what can be
more dear and precious than life itself? And yet
for this are none beholden, save to me alone.
For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten
Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 21

that multiplies and propagates mankind : but
that prime father of the universe, who at a dis-
pleasing nod makes heaven itself to tremble. He, ^
I say, must lay aside his frightful ensigns of\ '
majesty, and put away that grim aspect where-
with he makes the other gods to quake, and, stage
player-like, must lay aside his usual character, if
he would do that, the doing whereof he cannot
refrain from, i,e., getting of children.

The next place to the gods is challenged by the
Stoics. But give me one as stoical as ill-nature
can make him, and if I do not prevail on him to
part with his beard, that bush of wisdom, though
no other ornament than what nature in more
ample manner has given to goats, yet at least he
shall lay by his gravity, smooth up his brow,
relinquish' his rigid tenets, and in despite of
prejudice become sensible of some passion in
wanton sport and dallying. In a word, this
dictator of wisdom shall be glad to take Folly for
his diversion, if ever he would arrive to the honour
of a father.

And why should I not tell my story out ? To
proceed then. Is it the head, the face, the

22 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

breasts, the hands, the ears, or other more comely
parts, that serve for instruments of generation ? I
trow not, but it is that member of our body which
is so odd and uncouth as can scarce be mentioned
without a smile. This part, I say, is that fountain
of life, from which originally spring all things in a
truer sense than from the elemental seminary.
Add to this, what man would be so silly as to run
his head into the collar of a matrimonial noose, if,
as wise men are wont to do, he had before-hand
duly considered the inconveniences of a wedded
life ? Or indeed what woman would accept a
husband, if she did but forecast the pangs of child-
birth, and the plague of being a nurse ?

Since then you owe your birth to the bride-bed,
and what was preparatory to that, the solemnizing
.. of marriage to my waiting-woman Madness/ you
cannot but acknowledge how much you are in-
debted to me. Beside, those who had once dearly
bought the experience of their folly, would never
re-engage themselves in the same entanglement by
a second match, if it were not occasioned by the
forgetfulness of past dangers. And Venus herself,
whatever Lucretius pretends to the contrary, can-

1

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

not deny, but that with out^myjassis tan ce, her pro-
creative power would prove weak and ineffectual.
It was from my sportive and tickling recreation
that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and
those who now supply their stead, the mortified
monks and friars. As also kings, priests, arid
popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are
at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of
heaven, though ne'er so spacious, to jostle for elbow
room.

& But it is not sufficient to have made it appear
that I am the source and original of all life, except^
I likewise shew that all the benefits of life are
equally at my disposal. And what are such ?
Why, can any one be said properly to live to
whom pleasure is denied? You will give me your
assent ; for there is none I know among you so
wise shall I say, or so silly, as to be of a contrary
opinion. The Stoics indeed contemn, and pretend
to banish pleasure ; but this is only a dissembling
trick, and a putting the vulgar out of conceit with
it, that they may more quietly engross it to them-
selves ; but I dare them now to confess what one
stage of life is not melancholy, dull, tiresome,

24 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

i tedious, and uneasy, unless we spice it with
pleasure, that hautgoust of Folly. Of the truth
whereof, the never -• enough to be commended
Sophocles is sufficient authority, who gives me the
highest character in that sentence of his,

To know nothing is the sweetest life.

Yet abating from this, let us examine the case
more narrowly. Who knows not that the first
scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and
delightsome ? What, then, is it in children that
makes us fo kiss, hug, and play with them, and
that the bloodiest enemy can scarce have the heart
to hurt them ; but their ingredients of innocence
and Folly ? Of which nature out of providence did
purposely compound and blend their tender infancy,
that by a frank return of pleasure they might make
some sort of amends for their parents' trouble, and
give in caution as it were for the discharge of a
future education ; the next advance from childhood
is youth, and how favourably is this dealt with ;
how kind, courteous, and respectful are all to it ?
and how ready to become serviceable upon all

occasions ?

And whence reaps it this happiness ? Whence

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 25

indeed, but jrom_. me. only, by whose procurement
it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with
the less of disquiet ? And when once lads begin
to grow up, and attempt to write man, their pretti-
ness does then soon decay, their briskness flags,
their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and
their blood grows cold; and the further they pro-
ceed in years, the more they grow backward in the
enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes
on, a burden to itself as well as others, and that so
heavy and oppressive, as none would bear the
weight of, unless out of pity to their sufferings.

I again intervene, and lend a helping hand,
assisting them at a dead lift, in the same method
the poets feign their gods to succour dying men, by
transforming them into new creatures, which I do
by bringing them back, after they have one foot in
the grave, to their infancy again ; so as there is a
great deal of truth couched in that old proverb,
" Once an old man, and twice a child." Now if any
one be curious to understand what course I take to
effect this alteration, my method is this. I bring
them to my well of forgetful ness, the fountain
whereof is in the Fortunate Islands, and the river

26 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Lethe in hell but a small stream of it, and when
they have there filled their bellies full, and washed
down care, by the virtue and operation whereof they
become young again. [ Ay, but, say you, they merely
dote, and play the fool. Why yes, this is what I
fmean by growing young again, j For what else is it to
/ be a child than to be a fool and an idiot ? It is the
1 being such that makes that age so acceptable : for
who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a
boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and there-
fore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a
disparaging proverb, " Soon ripe, soon rotten ? "

And farther, who would keep company or have
any thing to do with such an old blade, as, after the
wear and harrowing of so many years should yet
continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment
as he had at any time been in his middle -age. And
therefore it is great kindness of me that old men
grow fools, since it is hereby only that they are
freed from such vexations as would torment them
if they were more wise : they can drink briskly, bear
up stoutly, and lightly pass over such infirmities, as
a far stronger constitution could scarce master.
Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are

I

I
I

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 27

brought back to their horn-book again, to learn to
spell their fortune in love. / Most wretched would
they needs be if they had but wit enough to be
sensible of their hard condition ; but by my assist-
ance, they carry off all well, and to their respective
friends approve themselves good, sociable, jolly
companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed
for a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery
of Achilles was but rough, harsh, and hesitant ; and
the same poet elsewhere tells us of old men that
sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of
flourish and elegance.

o

And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo
children, who are pretty forward in a softly, innocent
prattle, but otherwise are too much tongue-tied, and
want the other's most acceptable embellishment of
a perpetual talkativeness. Add to this, that old
men love to be playing with children, and children
delight as much in them, to verify the proverb, that
"Birds of a feather flock together." And indeed
what difference can be discerned between them, but
that the one is more furrowed with wrinkles, and
has seen a little more of the world than the other ?
For otherwise their whitish hair, their want of teeth,

28 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

their smallness of stature, their milk diet, their bald
crowns, their prattling, their playing, their short
memory, their heedlessness, and all their other en-
dowments, exactly agree. And the more they ad-
vance in years the nearer they come back to their
cradle, till like children indeed, at last they depart
the world, without any remorse at the loss of life,
or sense of the pangs of death.

And now let any one compare the excellency of
my metamorphosing power to that which Ovid at-
tributes to the gods ; their strange feats in some
drunken passions we will omit for their credit sake,
and instance only in such persons as they pretend
great kindness for; these they transformed into
trees, birds, insects, and sometimes serpents. But
alas, their very change into somewhat else argues
the destruction of what they were before. Whereas
I can restore the same numerical man to his pristine
state of youth, health and strength ; yea, what is
more, if men would but so far-ponsult , their own
interest, as to discard all thoughts of wisdom, and
entirely resign themselves to my guidance and con-
duct, old age should be a paradox, and each man's
years a perpetual spring.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 29

For look how your hard plodding students, by a
close sedentary confinement to their books, grow
mopish, pale, and meagre, as if by a continual
wrack of brains, and torture of invention, their
veins were pumped dry, and their whole body
squeezed sapless, whereas my followers are smooth,
plump, and bucksome, and altogether as lusty as so
many bacon-hogs, or sucking calves, never in their
career of pleasure to be arrested with old age, if
they could but keep themselves untainted from the
contagiousness of wisdom, with the leprosy whereof,
if at any time they are infected,[it is only for pre-
vention, lest they should otherwise have been too
happy.

For a more ample confirmation of the truth of
what foregoes, it is on all sides confessed, that
Folly is the best preservative of youth, and the
most effectual antidote against age. Arid it is a
never-failing observation made of the people of
Brabant, that, contrary to the proverb of " Older
and wiser/' the more ancient they grow, the more
fools they are ; and there is not any one country,
whose inhabitants enjoy themselves better, and rub
through the world with more ease and quiet. To

30 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

these are nearly related, as well by affinity of
customs, as of neighbourhood, my friends the
Hollanders. Mine I may well call them, for they
stick so close and lovingly to me, that they are
styled fools to a proverb, and yet scorn to be
ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go
now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe,
Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a resto-
rative of age, whereas the accurate performance
of this feat lies only within the ability of my art
and skill.

/ It is I only who have the receipt of making that
liquor wherewith Memnon's daughter lengthened
out her grandfather's declining days : it is I that
am that Venus, who so far restored the languishing
Phaon, as to make Sappho fall deeply in love with
his beauty. /J/U Mine are those herbs, mine those
charms, that not only lure back swift time, when
past and gone, but what is more to be admired, clip
its wings, and prevent all farther flight. So then,
if you will all agree to my verdict, that nothing is
more desirable than the being young, nor any thing
more loathed than contemptible old age, you must
needs acknowledge it as an unrequitable obligation

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 31

from me, for fencing off the one, and perpetuating
the other.

But why should I confine my discourse to the
narrow subject of mankind only ? View the whole
heaven itself, and then tell me what one of that
divine tribe would not be mean and despicable, if
my name did not lend him some respect and
authority. /?Why is Bacchus always painted as a
young man, but only because he is freakish, drunk,
and mad ; and spending his time in toping, dancing,
masking, and revelling, seems to have nothing in
the least to do with wisdom ? Nay, so far is he
from the affectation of being accounted wise, that
he is content, all the rights of devotion which are
paid unto him should consist of apishness and
drollery. Farther, what scoffs and jeers did not
the old comedians throw upon him ? 0 swinish
punch-gut god, say they, that smells rank of the
sty he was sowed up in, and so on.// ^^ £2

But prithee, who in this case, always merry,
youthful, soaked in wine, and drowned in pleasure,
who, I say, in such a case, would change conditions,
either with the lofty menace-looking Jove, the
grave, yet timorous Pan, the stately Pallas, or

32 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

indeed any one other of heaven's landlords ? Why
is Cupid feigned as a boy, but only because he is an
under- witted whipster, that neither acts nor thinks
any thing with discretion ? Why is Y^nus adored
for the mirror of beauty, but only because she and
I claim kindred, she being of the same complexion
with my father Plutus, and therefore called by
Homer the Golden Goddess ? Beside, she imitates
me in being always a laughing, if either we believe
the poets, or their near kinsmen the painters, the
first mentioning, the other drawing her constantly
in that posture. Add farther, to what deity did
the Romans pay a more ceremonial respect than to
Flora, that bawd of obscenity ? And if any one
search the poets for any historical account of the
gods, he shall find them all famous for lewd pranks
and debaucheries.

It is needless to insist upon the miscarriages of
others, when the lecherous intrigues of Jove him-
self are so notorious, and when the pretendedly
chaste Diana so oft uncloaked her modesty to run a
hunting after her beloved Endymion. But I will
say no more, for I had rather they should be told of
their faults by Momus, who was wont formerly to

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 33

sting them with some close reflections, till nettled
by his abusive raillery, they kicked him out of
heaven for his sauciness of daring to reprove such as
were beyond corre6tion : rand now in his banish-
ment from heaven he finds but cold entertainment
here on earth, nay, is denied all admittance into
the court of princes, where notwithstanding my
handmaid Flattery finds a most encouraging wel-
come : but this petulant monitor being thrust out
of doors, the gods can now more freely rant and
revel, and take their whole swing of pleasure.

Now the beastly Priapus may recreate himself
without contradiction in lust and filthiness, now the
sly Mercury may, without discovery, go on in his
thieveries, and nimble-fingered juggles, the sooty
Vulcan may now renew his wronted custom of
making the other gods laugh by his hopping so
limpingly, and coming off with so many dry jokes,
and biting repartees. Silenus, the old doting lover,
to shew his activity, may now dance a frisking jig,
and the nymphs be at the same sport naked. The
goatish satyrs may make up a merry ball, and Pan,
the blind harper may put up his bagpipes, and sing
bawdy catches, to which the gods, especially when

34 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

they are almost drunk, shall give a most profound
attention. But why would I any farther rip open
and expose the weakness of the gods, a weakness so
childish and absurd, that no man can at the same time
keep his countenance, and make a relation of it ?

Now therefore, like Homer's wandering muse, I
will take my leave of heaven, and come down again
bere below, where we shall find nothing happy,
nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence
and assistance. And in the first place con-
sider how providently nature has took care
that in all her works there should be some
piquant smack and relish of Folly, for since the
Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason,
and folly nothing else but the being hurried by
passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too
dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first
tempered and made us up, put into the composition
of our humanity more than a pound of passions to
an ounce of reason ; and reason he confined within
"C the narrow cells of the brain, whereas he left
passions the whole body to range in.

Farther, he set up two sturdy champions to
stand perpetually on the guard, that reason might

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 35

make no assault, surprise, nor in-road. Anger, which
keeps its station in the fortress of the heart, and
lust, which like the signs Yirgo and Scorpio,
rules the belly and secret members. Against the
forces of these two warriors how unable is reason to
bear up and withstand, every day's experience does
abundantly witness. While let reason be never so
importunate in urging and reinforcing her admoni-
tions to virtue, yet the passions bear all before them ,
and by the least offer of curb or restraint grow but
more imperious, till reason itself, for quietness sake,
is forced to desist from all further remonstrance.

But because it seemed expedient that man, who
was born for the transaction of business, should have
so much wisdom as should fit and capacitate him
for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet lest
such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might
prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with
for an antidote, who prescribed this infallible recipe
of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly,
and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify
and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour
of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under
which genus to rank woman, whether among brutes

36 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the

extreme stupidness and folly of that sex. A sex

so unalterably simple, that for any of them to

thrust forward, and reach at the name of wise, is but

to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such

as endeavour, being but a swimming against the

stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the

bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the

effecting of it is impossible. For as it is a trite

1\ proverb, " That an ape will be an ape, though clad

l|in purple;" so a woman will be a woman, i.e., a

\ \ fool, whatever disguise she takes up. /I

And yet there is no reason women should take it
amiss to be thus charged ; for if they do but
rightly consider they will find it is to Folly they
are beholden for those endowments, wherein they
so far surpass and excel man. As first, for their
unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they
tyrannize over the greatest tyrants. For what is
1 it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes
men so tawny and thin-skinned, so rough and
prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old
age, while women have such dainty smooth cheeks,
such a low gentle voice, and so pure a complexion,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 37

as if nature had drawn them for a standing pattern
of all symmetry and comeliness ? Beside, what
greater or juster aim and ambition have they than
to please their husbands ? In order whereunto
they garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls,
perfumes, and all other mysteries of ornament ; yet
after all they become acceptable to them only for
their Folly. Wives are always allowed their
humour, yet it is only in exchange for gratification!
and pleasure, which indeed are but other names iorj
Folly. -

But now some blood-chilled old men, that are ]
more for wine than wenching, will pretend, that in /
their opinion the greatest happiness consists in
feasting and drinking. Grant it be so, yet certainly
in the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly
must give the sauce and relish to the daintiest
cates and delicacies ; so that if there be no one of
the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon
by the rest, they must procure some comical buffoon,
that by his jokes, and flouts, and blunders shall
make the whole company split themselves with
laughing. For to what purpose were it to be
stuffed and crammed with so many dainty bits,

38 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

savoury dishes, and toothsome rarities, if after all
this epicurism of the belly, the eyes, the ears, and
the whole mind of man, were not as well foistred
and relieved with laughing, jesting, and such like
divertisements, which like second courses serve for
the promoting of digestion ?

And as to all those shooing horns of drunken-
ness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing
hey -jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two
in a hand, the beginning of mistress' healths. And
then the roaring out of drunken catches, the
calling in a fiddler, the leading out every one his
lady to dance, and such Kke riotous pastimes, these
were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men
of Greece, but of Gotham rather, being my in-
vention, and by me prescribed as the best preser-
vative of health : each of which, the more ridiculous
it is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed to
jog sleepingly through the world, in a dumpish
melancholy posture cannot properly be said to
live, but to be wound up as it were in a winding-
sheet before we are dead, and so to be shuffled
quick into a grave, and buried alive.

But there are yet others perhaps that have no

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 39

gust in this sort of pleasure, but place their great-
est content in the enjoyment of friends, telling
us that true friendship is to be preferred before
alLoth er acquirements. That it is a thing so use-
ful ancl^iecessary, as the very elements could not
long subsist without a natural combination ; so
pleasant that it affords as warm an influence as
the sun itself; so honest, if honesty in this case
deserve any consideration, that the very philoso-
phers have not stuck to place this as one among
the rest of their different sentiments of the chiefest
good. But what if I make it appear that I also
am the main spring and original of this endear-
ment ? Yes, I can easily demonstrate it, and that
not by crabbed syllogisms, or a crooked and unin-
telligible way of arguing, but can make it as the
proverb goes, " As plain as the nose on your face."
Well then, to scratch and curry one another, to
wink at a friend's faults ; nay, to cry up some
failings for virtuous and commendable, is not this
the next door to the being a fool? When one
looking steadfastly in hisnmsi^ess^Suice, admires a
mole as much as a beauty spot. When another
swears his lady's bad breath is a most redolent

40 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

perfume. And at another time the fond parent
hugs the squint-eyed child, and pretends it is
rather a becoming glance and winning aspect than
any blemish of the eye-sight, what is all this but
the very height of Folly ? Folly, I say, that both
makes friends and keeps them so. I speak of
mortal men only, among whom there are none but
have some small faults ; he is most happy that has
fewest. If we pass to the gods, we shall find that
they have so much of wisdom, as they have very
little of friendship ; nay, nothing of that which is
true and hearty.

The reason why men make a greater improve-
ment in this virtue, is only because they are more
credulous and easy natured ; for friends must be of
the same humour and inclinations too, or else the
league of amity, though made with never so many
protestations, will be soon broke. • Thus grave and
morose men seldom prove fast frienHs ; they are
too captious and censorious, and will not bear with
one another's infirmities ^ they are as eagle sighted
as may be in the espial of others' faults, while they
wink upon themselves, and never mind the beam
in their own eyes. ^In short, man being by nature

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 41

so prone to frailties, so humoursome and cross-
grained, and guilty of so many slips and miscar-
riages, there could be no firm friendship contracted,
except there be such an allowance made for each
others' defaults, which the Greeks term 'Ewj0«a> and
we may construe good nature, which is but another
word for_ Folly. 1 And what ? Is not Cupid, that
first father of all relation, is not he stark blind,
that as he cannot himself distinguish of colours, so
he would make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely
of all love concerns, and wheedle us into a thinking
that we are always in the right ?

Thus every Jack sticks to his own Jill ; every
tinker esteems his own trull ; and the hob-nailed '
suitor prefers Joan the milk-maid before any of my
lady's daughters. £ These things are true, and are
ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous
they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive
their cement and consolidation. J

The same which has been said of friendship is
much more applicable to a state of marriage, which
is but the highest advance and improvement of
friendship in the closest bond of union. Good'
God ! What frequent divorces, or worse mischief,

3

42 THE rSE OF FOLLY.

would oft sadly hr L . except man and wife, were
so discreet as to pass rer light occasions of quarrel
with laughing, jesting, dissembling, and such like
playing the fool ? Nay, how few matches would-
go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know
how many little tricks of lust and wantonness, and
perhaps more gross failings, his coy and seemingly
bashful mistress had oft before been guilty of?
And how fewer marriages, when consummated,
would continue happy, if the husband were not
either sottishly insensible of, or did not purposely
wink at and pass over the lightness and forward-
ness of his good-natured wife ?

This peace and quietness is owing to my manage-
ment, for there would otherwise be continual jars,
and broils, and mad doings, if want of wit only did
not at the same time make a contented ^ cuckold
and a still house. If the cuckoo sing at the back
door, the unthinking cornute takes no notice of the
unlucky omen of others' eggs being laid in his own
nest, but laughs it over, kisses his dear spouse, and
all is well. And indeed it is much better patiently
to be such a hen-pecked frigot, than always to be
wracked and tortured with the grating surmises of

THE PRAISE &* JLLY. 43

arrd-jealousy. 1%. line-, there is no one
society, no. one relation iifjn stand in, would be
comfortable, or indeed tolerable, without my assis-
tance. There could be no right understanding
betwixt prince and people, lord and servant, tutor
and pupil, friend and friend, man and wife, buyer
and seller, or any persons however otherwise
related, if they did not cowardly put up small
abuses, sneakingly cringe and submit, or after all
fawningly scratch and flatter each other. This you
will say is much, but you shall yet hear what is
more.

Tell me then, can any one love another that first
hates himself? Is it likely any one should agreg,
with a friend that is first fallen out with his own
judgment ? Or -is it probable he should be any
way pleasing to another, who is a perpetual pla.gue
and trouble to himself? This is such a paradox
that none can be so mad as to maintain. Well, but
if I am excluded and barred out, every man would
be so far from being able to bear with others, that
he would be burthensome to himself, and conse-
quently incapable of any ease or satisfaction.
Nature, that toward some of her products plays the

44 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has
endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness
of disposition, as to nauseate and dislike whatever
is their own, and much admire what belongs to
other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy
what their birth or fortunes have bestowed upon
them. For what grace is there in the greatest
beauty, if it be always clouded with frowns and
sulliness ? Or what vigour in youth, if it be
harassed with a pettish, dogged, waspish, ill
humour ? None, sure.

Nor indeed can there be any creditable acquire-
ment of ourselves in any one station of life, but we
should sink without rescue into misery and despair,
if we were not buoyed up and supported by self-
love, which is but the elder sister, as it were, of
Folly, and her own constant friend and assistant.
I For what is or can be, more silly than to be lovers
and admirers of ourselves ? And yet if it were not
so, there will be no relish to any of our words or
actions. Take away this one property of a fool, and
the orator shall become as dumb and silent as the
pulpit he stands in ; the musician shall hang up his
untouched instruments on the wall ; the completest

THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 45

actors shall be Hissed off the stage ; the poet shall
be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes ; the
painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary land-
scape ; and the physician shall want food more than
his patients do physic. In short, without self-love,
instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old
beldam of fourscore ; instead of youthful, you shall
seem just dropping into the grave ; instead of
eloquent, a mere stammerer ; and in lieu of gentle
and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright
country clown ; it being so necessary that every one
should think well of himself before he can expect
the good opinion of others.

Finally, when it is the main and essential part of
happiness to desire to be no other than what we
already are. This expedient is again wholly owing
to self-love, which so flushes men with a good con-
ceit of their own, that no one repents of his shape,
of his wit, of his education, or of his country. So
as the dirty half-drowned Hollander would not re-
move into the pleasant plains of Italy, the rude
Thracian would not change his boggy soil for the
best seat in Athens, nor the brutish Scythian quit
his thorny deserts to become an inhabitant of the

46 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Fortunate Islands. And oh the incomparable contri-
vance of nature, who has ordered all things in so
even a method that wherever she has been less
bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a
larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former
defects, and makes all even.

xTo enlarge farther, I may well presume to aver,
that there are no considerable exploits performed,
no useful arts invented, but what I am the respec-
tive author and manager of. As first, what is more
fo / lofty and heroical than war.^ And yet, what is more
foolish than for some petty, trivial affront, to take
such a revenge as both sides shall be sure to be
losers, and where the quarrel must be decided at
the price of so many limbs and lives ? And when
they come to an engagement, what service can be
done by such pale-faced students, as by drudging
at the oars of wisdom, have spent all their strength
and activity ? No, the only use is of blunt sturdy
fellows that have little of wit, and so the more of re-
solution. Except you would make a soldier of such
another Demosthenes as threw down his arms when
he came within sight of the enemy, and lost that
credit in the camp which he gained in the pulpit.

1

<s

I

I

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 47

But counsel, deliberation, and advice, say you,
are very necessary for the management of war.
Very true, but not such counsel as shall be pres-
cribed by the strict rules of wisdom and justice ;
for a battle shall be more successfully fought by
serving-men, porters, bailiffs, padders, rogues, gaol-
birds, and such like tag-rags of mankind, than by
the most accomplished philosophers ; which last,
how unhappy they are in the management of such
concern g^Socrates (by the oracle adjudged to be
the wisest of mortals) is a notable example. Who
when he appeared in the attempt of some public
performance before the people, he faltered in the
£rst onset, and could never recover himself, but
was hooted and hissed home again. Yet this
philosopher was the less a fool, for refusing the ap-
pellation of wise, and not accepting the oracle's
compliment. - As also for advising that no philoso-
phers should have any hand in the government of
the commonwealth, He should have likewise at
the same time, added, that they should be banished
all human society. And what made this great man
poison himself to prevent the malice of his accusers ?
What made him the instrument of his own death,

48 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

but only his excessiveness of wisdom ? Whereby,
while he was searching into the nature of clouds,
while he was plodding and contemplating upon
ideas, while he was exercising his geometry upon
the measure of a flea, and diving into the recesses
of nature, for an account how little insects, when
they were so small, could make so great a buzz and
hum. While he was intent upon these fooleries
1 he minded nothing of the world, or its ordinary
concerns.

Next to Socrates comes his scholar Plato, a
famous orator indeed, that could be so dashed out
of countenance by an illiterate rabble, as to demur,
ttnd hawk, and hesitate, before he could get to the
end of one short sentence. Theophrastus was such
another coward, who beginning to make an oration,
was presently struck down with fear, as if he
had seen some ghost, or hobgoblin. Isocrates
was so bashful and timorous, that though he
taught rhetoric, yet he could never have the
confidence to speak in public. Cicero, the
master of Roman eloquence, was wont to begin
his speeches with a low, quivering voice, just
like a school-boy, afraid of 'not saying his lesson

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

perfect enough to escape whipping. And yet
Fabius commends this property of Tully as an
argument of a considerate orator, sensible of the
difficulty of acquitting himself with credit ; but
what hereby does he do more than plainly confess
that wisdom is but a rub and impediment to the
well management of any affair ? How would these
heroes crouch, and shrink into nothing, at the
sight of drawn swords, that are thus quashed and
stunned at the delivery of bare words ?

Now then let Plato's fine sentence be cried up,
that " happy are those commonwealths where either
philosophers are elected kings, or kings turn philo-
sophers." Alas, this is so far from being true, that
if we consult all historians for an account of past
ages, we shall find no princes more weak, nor any
people more slavish and wretched, than where the
administration of affairs fell on the shoulders of
some learned bookish governor. Of the truth
whereof, the two Catos are exemplary instances.
The first of which embroiled the city, and tired out
the senate by his tedious harangues of defending
himself, and accusing others ; the younger was an
unhappy occasion of the loss of the peoples' liberty,

50 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

while by improper methods he pretended to main-
tain it.

To these may be added Brutus, Cassius, the two
Gracchi, and Cicero himself, who was no less fatal
to Rome, than his parallel Demosthenes was to
Athens. As likewise Marcus Antoninus, whom we
may allow to have been a good emperor, yet the
less such for his being a philosopher ; and certainly
he did not do half that kindness to his empire by
his own prudent management of affairs, as he did
mischief by leaving such a degenerate successor as
his son Commodus proved to be. But it is a
common observation, that " A wise father has many
times a foolish son," nature so contriving it, lest the
taint of wisdom, like hereditary distempers, should
otherwise descend by propagation. Thus Tully's
son Marcus, though bred at Athens, proved but a
dull, insipid soul, and Socrates Ibis, children had as
one ingeniously expresses it, " more of the mother
than the father/' a phrase for their being fools.

However, it were the more excusable, though
wise men are so awkward and unhandy in the
ordering of public affairs, if they were not so bad,
or worse in the management of their ordinary and

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 51

domestic concerns. But alas, here they are much
to jseek. For place a formal wise man at a feast,
and he shall, either by his morose silence put the
whole table out of humour, or by his frivolous
questions disoblige and tire out all that sit near
him. Call him out to dance, and he shall move no
more nimbly than a camel. Invite him to any
public performance, and by his very looks he shall
damp the mirth of all the spectators, and at last
be forced, like Cato, to leave the theatre, because
he cannot unstarch his gravity, nor put on a more
pleasant countenance. If he engage in any dis-
course, he either breaks off abruptly, or tires out
the patience of the whole company, if he goes on.
If he have any contract, sale, or purchase to make,
or any other worldly business to transact, he
behaves himself more like a senseless stock than a
rational man. f So as he can be of no use nor ad-
vantage to himself, to his friends, or to his country;
because he knows nothing how the world goes, and
is wholly unacquainted with the humour of the
vulgar, who cannot but hate a person so disagreeing
in temper from themselves.

And indeed the whole proceedings of the world

52 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all
the actors being equally fools and madmen. And
therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be
singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or
man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented
desert, become a recluse from all mankind.
<// But to return to what I first proposed, what was
it in the infancy of the world that made men,
naturally savage, unite into civil societies, but only
flattery, one of my chiefest virtues ? For there is
nothing else meant by the fables of Amphion and
Orpheus with their harps ; the first making the
stones jump into a well-built wall, the other induc-
ing the trees to pull their legs out of the ground,
and dance the morrice after him. What was it
that quieted and appeased the Roman people,
when they brake out into a riot for the redress of
grievances ? Was it any sinewy starched oration ?
No, alas, it was only a silly, ridiculous story, told
/ by Menenius Agrippa, how the other members of
\^> the-^bedy^quarrelled with the belly, resolving no
/ longer to continue her drudging caterers. Till by
the penance they thought thus in revenge to
impose, they soon found their own strength so far

7 HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 53

diminished, that paying the cost of experiencing a
mistake, they willingly returned to their respective
duties.

Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at
the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satis-
fied them with such another tale of the fox and
the hedge-hog ; the first whereof being stuck fast
in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him,
and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter
officiously offers his service to drive them away.
No, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted
be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set
that will be ten times more greedy and devouring.
The moral of this he meant applicable to the people,
who if they had such magistrates removed as they
complained of for extortion, yet their successors
would certainly be worse.

With what highest advances of policy could
Sertorius have kept the Barbarians so well in awe,
as by a white hart, which he pretended was pre-
sented to him by Diana, and brought him intelli-
gence of all his enemies' designs ? What was
Lycurgus his grand argument for demonstrating the
force of education, but only the bringing out two

54 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

whelps of the same bitch, differently brought up,
and placing before them a dish, and a live hare.
The one, that had been bred to hunting, ran after
the game ; while the other, whose kennel had been
a kitchen, presently fell a licking the platter.

Thus the before-mentioned Sertorius made his
soldiers sensible that wit and contrivance would do
more than bare strength, by setting a couple of men
to the plucking off two horses' tails. The first
pulling at all in one handful, tugged in vain ; while
the other, though much the weaker, snatching off
one by one, soon performed his appointed task.

Instances of like nature are Minos and king
Numa,iboth which fooled the people into obedience
by a mere cheat and juggle. j The first by pre-
tending he was advised by Jupiter, the latter by
making the vulgar believe he had the goddess
^Egeria assistant to him in all debates and transac-
tions. And indeed it is by such wheedles that the
common people are best gulled and imposed upon.

For farther, what city would ever submit to the
rigorous laws of Plato, to the severe injunctions of
Aristotle ? Or the more impracticable tenets of
Socrates ? No, these would have been too straight

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 55

and galling, there not being allowance enough
made for the infirmities of the people.

To pass to another head, what was it made the
Decii so forward to offer themselves up as a sacri-
fice for an atonement to the angry gods, to rescue
and stipulate for their indebted country ? What
made Curtius, on a like occasion so desperately to
throw away his life, but only vain -glory, that is
condemned, and unanimously voted for a main
branch of Folly by all wise men ? What is more '
unreasonable and foppish, say they, than for any
man, out of ambition to some office, to vbow, to
scrape and cringe to the gaping rabble, to purchase
their favourby bribes and donatives, to have their l
names cried up in the streets, to be carried about
as it were for a fine sight upon the shoulders of the
crowd, to have their effigies carved in brass, and f
put up in the market place for a monument of their/
popularity ?

Add to this, the affectation of new titles and dis-
tinctive badges of honour ; nay, the very deifying
of such as were the most bloody tyrants, These
are so extremely ridiculous, that there is need of \j
more than one Democritus to laugh at them. And

56 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

yet hence only have been occasioned those memor-
able achievements of heroes, that have so much
employed the pens of many laborious writers.

It is Folly that, in a variety of guise, governs cities,
appoints magistrates, and supports judicatures.
And, in short, makes the whole course of man's life
a mere children's play, and worse than push-pin
diversion. The invention of all arts and sciences
are likewise owing to the same cause. For what
sedentary, thoughtful men would have beat their
brains in the search of new and unheard- of-
<-/mysteries, if not egged on by the bubbling hopes of
credit and reputation ? j They think a little glitter-
ing flash of vain-glory is a sufficient reward for all
their sweat, and toil, and tedious drudgery, while
>they that are supposedly more foolish, reap advan-
tage of the others' labours.

/xAnd now since I have made good my title to
valour and industry, what if I challenge an equal
share of wisdom ? How ! this, you will say, is absurd
and contradictory ; the east and west may as soon
shake hands as Folly and Wisdom be reconciled.
Well, but have a little patience and I will warrant
you I will make out my claim. First then, if

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 57

wisdom, as must be confessed, is no more than a
readiness of doing good, and an expedite method of
becoming serviceable to the world, to whom does
this virtue more properly belong ? To the wise
man. who partly out of modesty, partly out of
cowardice, can proceed resolutely in no attempt.
Or to the fool, that goes hand over head, leaps
before he looks, and so ventures through the most
hazardous undertaking without any sense or pros-
pect of danger ?

In the undertaking any enterprize the wise man
shall run to consult with his books, and daze him-
self with poring upon musty authors, while the
dispatchful fool shall rush bluntly on, and have
done the business, while the other is thinking of it.
For the two greatest lets and impediments to the
issue of any performance are modesty, which casts
a mist before men's eyes ; and fear, which makes
them shrink back, and recede from any proposal.
Both these are banished and cashiered by Folly,
and in their stead such a habit of fool-hardiness
introduced, as mightily contributes to the success of
all enterprizes. Farther, if you will have wisdom
taken in the other sense, of being a right judgment

4

58 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

of things, you snail see how short wise men fall of
it in this acceptation. //

First, then, it is certain that all things, like so
many Januses, carry a double face, or rather bear
a false aspect, most things being really in them-
selves far different from what they are in appear-
ance to others. So as that which at first blush
proves alive, is in truth dead ; and that again
which appears as dead, at a nearer view proves
to be alive. Beautiful seems ugly, wealthy poor,
scandalous is thought creditable, prosperous
passes for unlucky, friendly for what is most
opposite, and innocent for what is hurtful and
pernicious. In short, if we change the tables,
all things are found placed in a quite different
posture from what just before they appeared to
r 'and in.

If this seem too darkly and unintelligibly
expressed, I will explain it by the familiar instance
of some great king or prince, whom every one shall
suppose to swim in a luxury of wealth, and to be a
powerful lord and master. When, alas, on the one
Land he has poverty of spirit enough to make him

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 59

a mere bewar, and on the other side he is worse

OO '

than a galley-slave to his own lusts and passions.

If I had a mind farther to expatiate, I could
enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but
this one may at present suffice.

Well, but what is the meaning, will some say,
of all this ? Why, observe the application. If
any one in a play-house be so impertinent and
rude as to rifle the actors of their borrowed clothes,
make them lay down the character assumed, and
force them to return to their naked selves, would
not such a one wholly discompose and spoil the
entertainment ? And would he not deserve to be
hissed and thrown stones at till the pragmatical
fool could learn better manners ? For by such a
disturbance the whole scene will be altered. Such
as acted the men will perhaps appear to be women.
He that was dressed up for a young brisk lover,
will be found a rough old fellow. And he that
represented a king, will remain but a mean ordinary
serving-man, j The laying things thus open is
marring all the sport, which consists only in
counterfeit and disguise^

Now the world is nothing else but such another

60 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

comedy, where every one in the tire-room is first
habited suitably to the part he is to act. And as
it is successively their turn, out they come on the
stage, where he that now personates a prince, shall
in another part of the same play alter his dress,
and become a beggar, all things being in a mask
and particular disguise, or o^ferwise the play could
never be presented. Now if there should arise any
starched, formal don, that would point at the
several actors, and tell how this, that seems a petty
god, is in truth worse than a brute, being made
captive to the tyranny of passion. That the other,
who bears the character of a king, is indeed the
most slavish of serving-men, in being subject to the
mastership of lust and sensuality. That a third,
who vaunts so much of his pedigree, is no better
than a bastard for degenerating from virtue, which
ought to be of greatest consideration in heraldry,
and so shall go on in exposing all the rest. Would
not any one think such a person quite frantic, and
ripe for bedlam ?

For as nothing is more silly than preposterous
wisdom, so is there nothing more indiscreet
than an unreasonable reproof. And therefore he

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 61

is to be hooted out of all society that will not be
pliable, conformable, and willing to suit his humour
with other men's, remembering the law of clubs
and meetings, that he who will not do as the rest
must get him out of the company.

And it is certainly one great degree of wisdom
for every one to consflfer that he is but a man, and
therefore he should not pitch his soaring thoughts
beyond the level of mortality, but imp the wings
of his towering ambition, and obligingly submit
and condescend to the weakness of others, it being
many times a piece of complaisance to go out of the
road for company's sake. No, say you, this is a
grand piece of Folly. True, but yet all our living
is no more than such kind of fooling. Which
though it may seem harsh to assert, yet it is not so
strange as true.

For the better making it out it might perhaps
be requisite to invoke the aid of the muses, to
whom the poets devoutly apply themselves upon
far more slender occasions. Come then and assist,
ye Heliconian lasses, while I attempt to prove that
there is no method for an arrival at wisdom, and

62 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

consequently no track to the goal of happiness,
without the instructions and directions of Folly.

And here, in the first place it has been already
acknowledged, that all the passions are listed under
my regiment. Since this is resolved to be the
only distinction betwixt a wise man and a fool,
that this latter is governed by passion, the other
xguided by reason. And therefore the Stoics look
upon passions no other than as the infection and
malady of the soul that disorders the constitution
of the whole man, and by putting the spirits into
a feverish ferment many times occasion some mortal
distemper.

And yet these, however decried, are not only
our tutors to instruct us towards the attainment of
wisdom, but even bolden us likewise, and spur us
on to a quicker dispatch of all our undertakings.
This, I suppose, will be stomached by the stoical
Seneca, who pretends that the only emblem of
wisdom is the man without passion. Whereas the
supposing any person to be so, is perfectly to un-
man him, or else transforming him into some
fabulous deity that never was, nor ever will beJj
Nay, to speak more plain, it is but the making him

t-

§

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 63

a mere statue, immoveable, senseless, and altogether
inactive. And if this be their wise man, let them
take him to themselves, and remove him into
Plato's commonwealth, the new Atlantis, or some
other-like fairy land.

For who would not hate and avoid such a person
as should be deaf to all the dictates of common
sense ? That should have no more power of love
or pity than a block or stone, that remains heedless
of all dangers ? That thinks he can never mistake,
but can foresee all contingencies at the greatest
distance, and make provision for the worst presages ?
That feeds upon himself and his own thoughts, that
monopolises health, wealth, power, dignity, and all
to himself? That loves no man, nor is beloved of
any ? That has the impudence to tax even divine
providence of ill contrivance, and proudly grudges,
nay, tramples under foot all other men's reputation ;
and this is he that is the Stoic's complete wise man.

But prithee what city would choose such a
magistrate ? What army would be willing to serve
under such a commander ? Or what woman would
be content with such a do -little husband ? Who
would invite such a guest ? Or what servant would

64 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

be retained by such a master ? The most illiterate
mechanic would in all respects be a more acceptable
man, who would be frolicsome with his wife, free
with his friends, jovial at a feast, pliable in converse,
and obliging to all company. But I am tired out
with this part of my subject, and so must pass to
some other topics.

/ And now were any one placed on that tower,
I from whence Jove is fancied by the poets to survey
the world, he would all around discern how many
grievances and calamities our whole life is on every
side encompassed with. How unclean our birth,
how troublesome our tendance in the cradle, how
liable our childhood is to a thousand misfortunes,
how toilsome and full of drudgery our riper years,
how heavy and uncomfortable our old age, and
lastly, how unwelcome the unavoidableness of death.
Farther, in every course of life how many wracks
there may be of torturing diseases, how many un-
happy accidents may casually occur, how many un-
expected disasters may arise, and what strange
alterations may one moment produce ? Not to
mention such miseries as men are mutually the
cause of, as poverty, imprisonment, slander, re-

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 65

proach, revenge, treachery, malice, cosenage, \
deceit, and so many more, as to reckon them all |
would be as puzzling arithmetic as the numbering I
of the sands.

How mankind became environed with such hard
circumstances, or what deity imposed these plagues,
as a penance on rebellious mortals, I am not now at
leisure to enquire. ^ But whoever seriously takes
them into consideration must needs commend the
valour of the Milesian virgins, who voluntarily
killed themselves to get rid of a troublesome world.
And how many wise men have taken the same
course of becoming their own executioners. Among
whom, not to mention Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato,
Cassius, Brutus, and other heroes. The self-denying
Chiron is never enough to be commended ; who,
when he was offered by Apollo the privilege of
being exempted from death, and living on to the
world's end, he refused the enticing proposal, as
deservedly thinking it a punishment rather than a
reward.;

N But if all were thus wise you see how soon the
world would be unpeopled, and what need there
would be of a second Prometheus, to plaster up the

66 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

decayed image of mankind. I therefore come and
stand in this gap of danger, and prevent farther
mischief; partly by ignorance, partly by inadver-
tence. By the oblivion of whatever would be
grating to remember, and the hopes of whatever
may be grateful to expect, together palliating all
griefs with an intermixture of pleasure ; whereby I
make men so far from being weary of their lives,
that when their thread is spun to its full length,
they are yet unwilling to die, and mighty hardly
brought to take their last farewell of their friends.
Thus some decrepit old fellows, that look as
hollow as the grave into which they are falling,
that rattle in the throat at every word they speak,
that can eat no meat but what is tender enough to
suck, that have more hair on their beard than they
have on their head, and go sto0ping^ toward the
dust they must shortly return to. Whose skin
seems already drest into parchment, and their bones
already dried to a skeleton. These shadows of men
shall be wonderful ambitious of living longer, and
therefore fence off the attacks of death with all
imaginable sleights and impostures. One shall new
dye his grey hairs, for fear their colour should

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 67

betray his age. Another shall spruce himself up in
a light periwig. A third shall repair the loss of his
teeth with an ivory set. And a fourth perhaps shall
fall deeply in love with a young girl, and accordingly
court her with as much of gaiety and briskness as
the liveliest spark in the whole town. And we
cannot but know, that for an old man to marry a
young wife without a portion, to be a cooler to
other men's lust, is grown so common, that it is
become the a-la-mode of the times.

And what is yet more comical, you shall have
some wrinkled old women, whose very looks are a
sufficient antidote to lechery, that shall be canting
out, " Ah, life is a sweet thing," and so run a cater-
wauling. And to set themselves off the better,
they shall paint and daub their faces, always stand
a tricking up themselves at their looking-glass, go
naked-necked, bare-breasted, be tickled at a smutty
jest, dance among the young girls, write love-
letters, and do all the other little knacks of decoy-
ing hot-blooded suitors. And in the meanwhile,
however they are laughed at, they enj oy themselves
to the full, live up to their hearts' desire, and want
for nothing that may complete their happiness.

68 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

As for those that think them herein so ridiculous,
I would have them give an ingenuous answer to
this one query, whether if folly or hanging were
left to their choice, they had not much rather live
like fools, than die like dogs ?

But what matter is it if these things are resented
by the vulgar ? Their ill word is no injury to fools,
who are either altogether insensible of any affront,
or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were
knocked on the head, or had their brains dashed
out, they would have some cause to complain ; but
alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other
way injurious than as they are interpreted. Nor
otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so.
What harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff
you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and
be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts ?

And prithee, why should it be thought any
scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part
of our nature and essence ; and as so, our not being
wise can no more reasonably be imputed as a fault,
than it would be proper to laugh at a man because
he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls ; be-
cause he goes not on all four as beasts of the field ;

1

i

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 69

because he does not wear a pair of visible horns
as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags. By
the same figure we may call a horse unhappy,
because he was never taught his grammar ; and an
ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence ; but
sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is never-
theless valuable, so a man, for being a fool, is never
the more unfortunate, it being by nature and pro-
vidence so ordained for each.

Ay, but say our patrons of wisdom, the know-
ledge of arts and sciences is purposely attainable
by men, that the defect of natural parts may be
supplied by the help of acquired. As if it were
probable that nature, which had been so exact and
curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs, and
flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece,
and made man as it were by halves, to be after-
ward polished and refined by his own industry, in
the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians
feigned were invented by their god Theuth, as a
sure plague and punishment to mankind, being so
far from augmenting their happiness, that they do
not answer that end they were first designed for,

70 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

which, was the improvement of memory, as Plato
in his Phaedrus does wittily observe.

In the first golden age of the world there was
no need of these perplexities. There was then no
other sort of learning but what was naturally col-

lected from every man's common sense, improved
&

jc^ by an easy experience. What use could there have

o ^ been of grammar, when all men spoke the same

mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of

oratory, than barely to be understood by each

other ? What need of logic, when they were too

\vise to enter into any dispute ? Or what occasion

. « for rhetoric, where no difference arose to require

any laborious decision ?

And as little reason had they to be tied up by
any laws, since the dictates of nature and common
morality were restraint and obligation sufficient.
And as to all the mysteries of providence, they
made them rather the object of their wonder, than
their curiosity. And therefore were not so pre-
sumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to
labour for the solving all phenomena in astronomy,
or to rack their brains in the splitting of entities ;

and unfolding the nicest speculations, judging it a

*\

f

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 71

crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond
the reach of his shallow apprehension.

Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world,
as much the parent of happiness as it has been
since ofdevotion. But as soon as - the golden
age began by degrees to degenerate into more
drossy metals, then were arts likewise invented.
Yet at first but few in number, and those rarely
understood, till in farther process of time the
superstition of the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of |
the Grecians, spawned so many subtleties, that now
it is scarce the wrork of an age to be thoroughly
acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only.

And among all the several Arts, those are pro-
portionably most esteemed that come nearest to
weakness and fo]]y. For thus divines may bite
their nails, and naturalists may blow their fingers,
astrologers may know their own fortune is to be
poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp
the wind.

While all these hard-named fellows cannot make
So great a figure as a single quack.

And in this profession, those that have most confi-
dence, though the least skill, shall be sure of the

72 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

greatest custom. And indeed this whole art as it
is now practised, is but one incorporated compound
of craft and imposture.

Next to the physician comes he, who perhaps
will commence a suit with me for not being placed
before him, I mean the lawyer. Who is so silly as
to be ignoramus to a proverb, and yet by such are
all difficulties resolved, all controversies determined,
and all affairs managed so much to their own ad-
vantage, that they get those estates to themselves
which they are ^einployedtorecover for their clients.
While the poor divine in the mean time shall have
the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown, before,
by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money
enough to purchase a new one. /

As those arts therefore are most advantageous
to their respective professors which are farthest
distant from wisdom,^ so are those persons incom-
parably most happy that have least to do with any
at all, but jog on in the common road of nature,
which will never mislead us, except we voluntarily
leap over those boundaries which she has cautiously
set to our finite beings.J Nature glitters most in
her own plain, homely garb, and then gives the

:§

I

1

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 73

greatest lustre when she is unsullied from all arti-
ficial garnish.

Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb
creatures, we shall find those fare best that are left
to nature's conduct. As to instance in bees, what
is more to be admired than the industry and con-
trivance of these little animals ? What architect
could ever form so curious a structure as they give
a model of in their inimitable combs ? What king-
dom can be governed with better discipline than
they exactly observe in their respective hives ?

While the horse, by turning a rebel to nature
and becoming a slave to man, undergoes the wors
of tyranny. He is sometimes spurred on to battl
so long till he draws his guts after him for trappin
and at last falls down, and bites the ground instea
of grass. Not to mention the penalty of his jaw
being curbed, his tail docked, his back wrung, his
sides spur-galled, his close imprisonment in a stable,
his rapshin and fetters when he runs a grass, and
a great many other plagues, which he might have
avoided, if he had kept to that first station of
freedom which nature placed him in.

How much more desirable is the unconfined

5

74 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

range of flies and birds, who living by instinct,
would want nothing to complete their happiness, if
some well-employed Domitian would not persecute
the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins
for the entrapping of the other ? And if young
birds, before their unfledged wings can carry them
from their nests, are caught, and pent up in a cage,
for the being taught to sing, or whistle, all their
new tunes make not half so sweet music as their
wild notes, and natural melody. [ So much does
that which is but rough-drawn by nature surpass
and excel all the additional paint and varnish of
art. .

And we cannot sure but commend and admire
that Pythagorean cock, which as Lucian relates,
had been successively a man, a woman, a prince, a
subject, a fish, a horse, and a frog. After all his
experience, he summed up his judgment in this
censure, that man was the most wretched and de-
plorable of all creatures, all other patiently grazing
within the enclosures of nature, while man only
broke out, and strayed beyond those safer limits,
which he was justly confined to.

And Gryllus is to be adjudged wiser than the

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 75

much-counselling Ulysses, in as much as when by
the enchantment of Circe he had been turned into
a hog, he would not lay down his swinishnsss, nor
forsake his beloved sty, to run the peril of a
hazardous voyage. For a further confirmation
whereof I have the authority of Homer, that
captain of all poetry, who, as he gives to mankind
in general, the epithet of wretched and unhappy
so he bestows in particular upon Ulysses the title
of miserable, which he never attributes to Paris
Ajax, Achilles, or any other of the commanders
and that for this reason, because Ulysses was more
crafty, cautious, and wise, than any of the rest.

As those therefore fall shortest of happiness that ,
reach highest at wisdom, meeting with the greater
repulse for soaring beyond the boundaries of their
nature, and without remembering themselves to
be but men, like the fallen angels, daring them to
vie with Omnipotence, and giant-like scale heaven
with the engines of their own brain. /So are those
most exalted in the road of bliss that degenerate
nearest into brutes, and quietly divest themselves
of all use and exercise of reason.

And this we can prove by a familiar instance.

76 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

As namely, can there be any one sort of men that
enjoy themselves, better than those which we call
idiots, changelings, fools and naturals ? It may
perhaps sound harsh, but upon due consideration it
will be found abundantly true, that these persons
in all circumstances fare best, and live most com-
fortably. LAs first, they are void of all fear, which
is a very great privilege to be exempted from^
They are troubled with no remorse, nor pricks of
conscience. They are jnoJL frighted with anv_bug^
bear stories of another world. They startle not at
the fancied appearance of ghosts, or apparitions.
They are not wracked with the dread of impending
mischiefs, nor bandied with the hopes of any ex-
pected enjoyments.* In short, they are unassaulted
by all those legions of cares that war against the
quiet of rational souls. They are ashamed of
nothing, fear no man, banish the uneasiness of am-
bition, envy, and love. And to add the reversion
!of a future happiness to the enjoyment of a present
me, they have no sin neither to answer for ; divines
unanimously maintaining, that a gross and una-
voidable ignorance does not only extenuate and

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 77

abate from the aggravation, but wholly expiate the
guilt of any immorality.

Come now then as many of you as challenge the
respect of being accounted wise, ingenuously confess
how many insurrections of rebellious thoughts, and
pangs of a labouring mind, ye are perpetually
thrown and tortured with. Reckon up all those
inconveniences that you are unavoidably subject to,
and then tell me whether fools, by being exempted
from all those embroilments, are not infinitely more
free and_happy than yourselves ? Add to this,
that fools do not barely laugh, and sing, and play
the good-fellow alone to themselves. But as it is
the nature of good to be communicative, so they
impart their mirth to others, by making sport for
the whole company they are at any time engaged
in, as if providence purposely designed them for an
antidote to melancholy. Whereby they make all
persons so fond of their society, that they are
welcomed to all places, hugged, caressed, and
defended, a liberty given them of saying or doing
anything. So well beloved, that none dares to
offer them the least injury ; nay, the most raven-
ous beasts of prey will pass them by untouched,

78 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

as if by instinct they were warned that such
innocence ought to receive no hurt.

Farther, their converse is so acceptable in the
court of princes, that few kings will banquet, walk,
or take any other diversion, without their attend-
ance ; nay, and had much rather have their
company, than that of their gravest counsellors,
whom they maintain more for fashion-sake than
good-will. Nor is it so strange that these fools
should be preferred before graver politicians, since
these last, by their harsh, sour advice, and ill-
timing the truth, are fit only to put a prince out of
the humour, while the others laugh, and talk, and
joke, without any danger of disobliging.

It is one farther very commendable property
of fools, that they always speak the truth, than
which there is nothing more noble and heroical.
For so, though Plato relate it as a sentence of
Alcibiades, that in the sea of drunkenness truth
swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller
of truth, yet this character may more justly be
assumed by me, as I can make good from the
authority of Euripides, who lays down this as an

I

1

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 79

axiom, "Children and fools always speak the//
truth."

Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it
in his face ; or what is more notifying, discovers iti
by his words. While the wise man, as Euripides
observes, carries a double tongue ; the one to speak
what may be said, the other what ought to be.
The one what truth, the other what the time
requires. / Whereby he can in a trice so alter his
judgment, as to prove that to be now white, which
he had just before swore to be black. Like the
satyr at his porridge, blowing hot and cold at the
same breath ; in his lips professing one thing, when
in his heart he means another.

Furthermore, princes in their greatest splendour
seem upon this account unhappy, in that they miss
the advantage of being told the truth, and are
shammed off by a parcel of insinuating courtiers,
that acquit themselves as flatterers more than as
friends. But some will perchance object, that
princes do not love to hear the truth, and therefore
wise men must be very cautious how they behave
themselves before them, lest they should take too

80 I HE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

great a liberty in speaking what is true, rather
than what is acceptable.

This must be confessed, truth indeed is seldom
palatable to the ears of kings. Yet fools have so
great a privilege as to have free leave, not only to
speak bare truths, but the most bitter ones too.
So as the same reproof, which, had it come from
the mouth of a wise man, would have cost him his
head, being blurted out by a fool, is not only par-
doned, but well taken, and rewarded. (. For truth
has naturally a mixture of pleasure, if it carry with
it nothing of offence to the person whom it is ap-
plied to ; and the happy knack of ordering it so is
bestowed only on fools. 'Tis for the* same reason
that this sort of men are more fondly beloved by
women, who like their taking them about, and
playing with them, though never so boisterously.
Pretending to take that only in jest, which they
would have to be meant in earnest, as that sex is
very ingenious in palliating, and dissembling the
bent of their foolish inclinations.

But to return. An additional happiness of these
fools appears farther in this, that when they have
run merrily on to their last stage of life, they

rlHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 81

neither find any fear nor feel any pain to die, but
march contentedly to the other world, where their
company sure must be as acceptable as it was here
upon earth.

Let us draw now a comparison between the
dition of a fool and that of a wise man, and see
how infinitely the one outweighs the other.

Give me any instance, then, of a man as wise
you can fancy him possible to be, that has spent
all his younger years in poring upon books, and
trudging after learning, in the pursuit whereof he
squanders away the pleasantest time of his life in
watching, sweat, and fasting. And in his latter
days he never tastes one mouthful of delight,
but is always stingy, poor, dejected, melancholy,
burthensome to himself,, and unwelcome to others.
Pale, lean, thin -jawed, sickly, contracting by his
sedentariness such hurtful distempers as bring him
to an untimely death, like roses plucked before
they shatter. Thus have you the draught of a
wise man's happiness, more the object of a com-
miserating pity, than of an ambitioning envy.

But now again come the croaking Stoics, and
tell me in mood and figure, that nothing is more

82 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

miserable than the being mad. But the being a
fool is the being mad, therefore there is nothing
more miserable than the being a fool. Alas, this is
but a fallacy, the discovery whereof solves the force
of the whole syllogism. Well, then, they argue
subtlely, 'tis true ; but as Socrates in Plato makes
two Venuses and two Cupids, and shows how their
actions and properties ought not to be confounded,
so these disputants, if they had not been mad
themselves, should have distinguished between a
double madness in others. And there is certainly
a great difference in the nature as well as in the
degrees of them, and they are not both equally
scandalous ; for Horace seems to take delight in
one sort, when he says —

Does welcome frenzy make me thus mistake ?

And Plato in his Phsedon ranks the madness
of poets, of prophets, and of lovers among those
properties which conduce to a happy life. And
Virgil, in the sixth ^Eneid, gives this epithet to his
industrious ^Eneas : —

If you will proceed to these your mad attempts.

And indeed there is a two-fold sort of madness.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 83

The one that which the furies bring from hell ;
those that are herewith possessed are hurried on
to wars and contentions, by an inexhaustible thirst
of power and riches, inflamed to some infamous and
unlawful lust, enraged to act the parricide, seduced
to become guilty of incest, sacrilege, or some other
of those crimson-dyed crimes ; or, finally, to be so
pricked in conscience as to be lashed and stung
with the whips and snakes of grief and remorse.
<x But there is another sort of madness that pro-
ceeds from Folly, so far from being any way
injurious or distasteful that it is thoroughly good
and desirable. And this happens when by a harm-
less mistake in the judgment of things the mind is
freed from those cares which would otherwise
gratingly afflict it, and smoothed over with a
content and satisfaction it could not under other
circumstances so happily enjoy. And this is that
comfortable apathy or insensibleness which Cicero,
in an epistle to his friend Atticus, wishes himself
master of; that he might the less take to heart
those insufferable outrages committed by the
tyrannizing triumvirate, Lepidus, Antonius, and
Augustus.

84 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

That Grecian likewise had a happy time of it,
who was so frantic as to sit a whole day in the
empty theatre laughing, shouting, and clapping his
hands, as if he had really seen some pathetic
tragedy acted to the life. When indeed all was no
more than the strength of imagination, and the
efforts of delusion, while in all other respects the
same person behaved himself very discreetly was,

Sweet to his friends, to his wife, obliging, kind,
And so averse from a revengeful mind,
That had his men unsealed his bottled wine,
He would not fret, nor doggedly repine.

And when by a course of physic he was recovered
from this frenzy, he looked upon his cure so far
from a kindness, that he thus reasons the case with
his friends :

This remedy, my friends, is worse i' the main
Than the disease, the cure augments the pain ;
My only hope is a relapse again.

And certainly they were the more mad of the
two who endeavoured to bereave him of so pleasing
a delirium, and recall all the aches of his head by
dispelling the mists of his brain.

I have not yet determined whether it be proper
to include all the defects of sense and understanding

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 85

under the common genius of madness. For if any-
one be so short-sighted as to take a mule for an
ass, or so shallowpated as to admire a paltry ballad
for an elegant poem, he is not thereupon immedi-
ately censured as mad. But if anyone let not only
his senses but his judgment be imposed upon in the
most ordinary common concerns, he shall come
under the scandal of being thought next door to a
madman.

As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and
should take it for ravishing music ; or if any one,
born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a
prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if, as
is most usual, it be accompanied with pleasure,
brings a great satisfaction both to those who are
possessed with it themselves, and those who deride
it in others, though they are not both equally
frantic. And this species of madness is of larger
extent than the world commonly imagines. Thus
the whole tribe of madmen make sport among
themselves, while one laughs at another ; he that
is more mad many times jeering him that is less so.
But indeed the greater each man's madness is, the
greater is his happiness, if it be but such a sort as

86 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

proceeds from an excess of folly, which is so epide-
mical a distemper that it is hard to find any one
man so uninfected as not to have sometimes a fit
or two of some sort of frenzy.

There is only this difference between the several
patients, he that shall take a broom-stick for a
strait- bodied woman is without more ado sentenced
for a madman, because this is so strange a blunder
as very seldom happens. Whereas he whose wife
is a common jilt, that keeps a warehouse free for
all customers, and yet swears she is as chaste as an
untouched virgin, and hugs himself in his contented
mistake, is scarce taken notice of, because he fares
no worse than a gre^many more of his good-
natured neighbours.'^

Among these are to be ranked such as take an
immoderate delight in hunting, and think no music
comparable to the sounding of horns and the
yelping of beagles. And were they to take physic,
would no question think the most sovereign virtues
to be in the album Grcecum of a dog's tail. When
they have run down their game, what strange plea-
sure they take in cutting of it up ! Cows and
sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 87

but what is killed in hunting must be broke up by
none under a gentleman, who shall throw down his
hat, fall devoutly on his knees, and drawing out a
slashing hanger, for a common knife is not good
enough, after several ceremonies shall dissect all the
parts as artificially as the best skilled anatomist,
while all that stand round shall look very intently,
and seem to be mightily surprised with the novelty,
though they have seen the same an hundred times
before. And he that can but dip his finger, and
taste of the blood, shall think his own bettered by
it. And though the constant feeding on such diet
does but assimilate them to the nature of those
beasts they eat of, yet they will swear that venison
is meat for princes, and that their living upon it
makes them as great as emperors.

Near akin to these are such as take a great
fancy for building. They raise up, pull down,
begin anew, alter the model, and never rest till
they run themselves out of their whole estate,
taking up such a compass for buildings, till they
leave themselves not one foot of land to live upon,
nor one poor cottage to shelter themselves from
cold and hunger. And yet all the while are mighty

SS THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

proud of their contrivances, and sing a sweet
requiem to their own happiness.

To these are to be added those plodding vir-
tuosos, that plunder the most inward recesses of
nature for the pillage of a new invention, and
rake over sea and land for the turning up some
hitherto latent mystery. //And are so continually
tickled with the hopes of success, that they spare
for no 'cost nor pains, but trudge on, and upon a
defeat in one attempt, courageously tack about to
another, and fall upon new experiments, never
giving over till they have calcined their whole
estate to ashes, and have not money enough left
d to purchase one crucible or limbeck.

And, yet after all, they are not so much dis-
couraged, but that they dream fine things still, and
animate others what they can to the like undertak-
ings. Nay, when their hopes come to the last
gasp, after all their disappointments, they have yet
one salvo for their credit, that : —

In great exploits our bare attempts suffice.

And so inveigh against the shortness of their life,
which allows them not time enough to bring their
designs to maturity and perfection.

THE PRAISE OF POLL Y. 89

Whether dice-players may be so favourably dealt
with as to be admitted among the rest is scarce yet
resolved upon. But sure it is hugely vain and
ridiculous, when we see some persons so devoutly
addicted to this diversion, that at the first rattle of
the box their heart shakes within them, and keeps
consort with the motion of the dice. They are
egg'd on so long with the hopes of always winning,
till at last, in a literal sense, they have thrown
away their whole estate, and made shipwreck of all
they have, scarce escaping to shore with their own
clothes to their backs, thinking it in the mean-
while a great piece of religion to be just in the,
payment of their stakes, and will cheat any
creditor sooner than him who trusts them in play.

And that poring old men, that cannot tell their
cast without the help of spectacles, should be
sweating at the same sport; nay, that such decrepit
blades, as by the gout have lost the use of their
fingers, should look over, and hire others to throw
for them. This indeed is prodigiously extravagant ;*
but the consequence of it ends so oft in downright
madness, that it seems rather to belong to the
furies than to folly.

90 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

The next to be placed among the regiment of
fools are such as make a trade of telling or in-
quiring after incredible stories of miracles and
prodigies. Never doubting that a lie will choke
them, they will muster up a thousand several
strange relations of spirits, ghosts, apparitions,
raising of the devil, and such like bugbears of
superstition; which the farther they are from being
probably true, the more greedily they are swal-
lowed, and the more devoutly believed. And
these absurdities do not only bring an empty
-ure, and cheap divertisement, but they are a
good trade, and procure a comfortable income to
•iuch priests and friars as by this craft get their gain.

To these again are nearly related such others as
attribute strange virtues to the shrines and images
of saints and martyrs, and so would make their
credulous proselytes believe, that if they pay their
devotion to St. Christopher in the morning, they
shall be guarded and secured the day following
from all dangers and misfortunes. If soldiers, when
they first take arms, shall come and mumble over
such a set prayer before the picture of St. Barbara,
they shall return safe from all engagements. Or if

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 91

any pray to Erasmus on such particular holidays,
with the ceremony of wax candles, and other fop-
peries, he shall in a short time be rewarded with a
plentiful increase of wealth and riches. The Chris-
tians have now their gigantic St. George, as well
as the pagans had their Hercules ; they paint the
saint on horseback, and drawing the horse in
splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they
scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping
the very beast.

What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain "<*
the cheat of pardons and indulgences ? That by
these compute the time of each soul's residence in
purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter con-
tinuance, according as they purchase more or fewer
of these paltry pardons and saleable exemptions ?
Or what can be said bad enough of others, who
pretend that by the force of such magical charms,
or by the fumbling over their beads in the rehearsal
of such and such petitions ; which some religious
impostors invented, either for diversion, or, what is
more likely, for advantage ; they shall procure
riches, honour, pleasure, health, long life, 'a lusty

92 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

old age, nay, after death a sitting at the right
hand of our Saviour in His kingdom.

Though as to this last part of their happiness,
they care not how long it be deferred, having scarce
any appetite toward a tasting the joys of heaven ;
till they are surfeited, glutted with, and can no
longer relish their enjoyments on earth. By this
easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious
highwayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe-
taking judge, shall disburse some part of their un-
just gains, and so think all their grossest impieties
sufficiently atoned for. So many perjuries, lusts,
drunkenness, quarrels, bloodsheds, cheats, trea-
cheries, and all sorts of debaucheries, shall all be,
as it were, struck a bargain for, and such a con-
tract made, as if they had paid off all arrears, and
might now begin upon a new score.

And what can be more ridiculous, than for some
others to be confident of going to heaven by re-
peating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms,
which the devil taught St. Bernard ; thinking
thereby to have put a trick upon him, but that he
was over-reached in his cunning.

Several of these fooleries, which are so gross and

1

I

33

THE PRAISE OF FOLL Y. 93

absurd, as I myself am even ashamed to own, are
practised and admired, not only by the vulgar, but
by such proficients in religion as one might well
expect should have more wit.

From the same principles of folly proceeds the
custom of each country's challenging their particular
guardian-saint. Nay, each saint has his distinct
office allotted to him, and is accordingly addressed
to upon the respective occasions. As one for the
toothache, a second to grant an easy delivery in
child-birth, a third to help persons to lost goods,
another to protect seamen in a long voyage, a fifth
to guard the farmer's cows and sheep, and so on.
For to rehearse all instances would be extremely
tedious.

There are some more catholic saints petitioned to
upon all occasions, as more especially the Virgin
Mary, whose blind devotees think Jt ™ppnera \\^\r
to place the mother before the Son.

And of all the prayers and intercessions that are
made to these respective saints the substance of
them is no more than downright Folly. Among all
the trophies that for tokens of gratitude are hung
upon the walls and ceilings of churches, you shall

94 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

find no relics presented as a memorandum of any
that were ever cured of Folly, or had been made
one dram the wiser.

One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore ;
another recovered when he had been run through

o

by an enemy ; one, when all his fellow- soldiers
were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps
as cowardly, made his escape from the field ;
another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke,
and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence
for practising his old trade of thieving ; another
broke gaol, and got loose ; a patient, against his
physician's will, recovered of a dangerous fever ;
another drank poison, which putting him into a
violent looseness, did his body more good than hurt,
to the great grief of his wife, who hoped upon this
occasion to have become a joyful widow ; another
had his waggon overturned, and yet none of his
horses lamed ; another had caught a grievous fall,
and yet recovered from the bruise ; another had
been tampering with his neighbour's wife, and es-
caped very narrowly from being caught by the
enraged cuckold in the very act.

After all these acknowledgments of escapes from

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 95

such singular dangers, there is none, as I have
before intimated, that return thanks for being
freed from Folly. Folly being so sweet and luscious,
that it is rather sued for as a happiness, than
deprecated as a punishment. But why should I
launch out into so wide a sea of superstitions 1

Had I as many tongues as Argus eyes,
Briareus hands, they all would not suffice
Folly in all her shapes t'epitomize.

Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved
to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so
far from preventing or removing, that they blacken
the darkness, and promote the delusion. Wisely
foreseeing that the people, like cows, which never
give down the>r milk so well as when they are
gently stroked, would part with less if they knew
more, their bounty proceeding only from a mis-
take of charity.

Now if any grave wise man should stand up, and
.unseasonably speak the truth, telling every one
that a^gious life is the only way of securing a happy
•death ; tKaTtfie best title to a pardon of our sins
is purchased by a hearty abhorrence of our guilt,
and sincere resolutions of amendment ; that the

96 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

•Xbest devotion which can be paid to any saints is to
imitate them in their exemplary life. If he should
proceed thus to inform them of their several mis-
takes, there would be quite another estimate put
upon tears, watchings, masses, fastings, and other
severities, which before were so much prized, as
persons will now be vexed to lose that satisfaction
they formerly found in them.

In the same predicament of fools are to be ranked
such, as while they are yet living, and in good
health, take so great a care how they shall be
buried when they die, that they solemnly appoint
how many torches, how many escutcheons, how
many gloves to be given, and how many mourners
they will have at their funeral. As if they thought
they themselves in their coffins could be sensible of
what respect was paid to their corpse. Or as if
they doubted they should rest a whit the less quiet
in the grave if they were with less state and pomp

^interred.

Now though I am in so great haste, as I would
not willingly be stopped or detained, yet I cannot
pass by without bestowing some remarks upon
another sort of fools ; who, though their first des-

!

t
i

a

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 97

cent was perhaps no better than from a tapster or
tinker, yet highly value themselves upon their birth
and parentage. One fetches his pedigree from
./Eneas, another from Brute, a third from king
Arthur. They hang up their ancestors' worm-eaten
pictures as records of antiquity, and keep a long
list of their predecessors, with an account of all
their offices and titles, while they themselves are
but transcripts of their forefathers' dumb statues,
and degenerate even into those very beasts which
they carry in their coat of arms as ensigns of their
nobility. And yet by a strong presumption of
their birth and quality, they live not only the most
pleasant and unconcerned themselves, but there are
not wanting others too who cry up these brutes
almost equal to the gods.

But why should I dwell upon one or two in-
stances of Folly, when there are so many of like
nature. Conceitedness and self-love making many
by strength of Fancy believe themselves happy,
when otherwise they are really wretched and
despicable. Thus the most ape-faced, ugliest
fellow in the whole town, shall think himself a
mirror of beauty. Another shall be so proud of

98 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

his parts, that if he can but mark out a triangle
with a pair of compasses, he thinks he has mastered
all the difficulties of geometry, and could outdo
Euclid himself. A third shall admire himself for a
ravishing musician, though he have no more skill
in the handling of any instrument than a pig play-
ing on the organs. And another that rattles in
the throat as hoarse as a cock crows, shall he proud
of his voice, and think he sings like a nightingale.

There is another very pleasant sort of madness,
whereby persons assume to themselves whatever of
accomplishment they discern in others. Thus the
happy rich churl in Seneca, who had so short a
memory, as he could not tell the least story with-
out a servant standing by to prompt him, and was
at the same time so weak that he could scarce go
upright ; yet he thought he might adventure to^
accept a challenge to a duel, because he kept at
home some lusty, sturdy fellows, whose strength
he relied upon instead of his own.

It is almost needless to insist upon the several
professors of arts and sciences, who are all so egre-
giously conceited, that they would sooner give up
their title to an estate in lands, than part with the

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 99

reversion of their wits. Among these, more especi-
ally stage-players, musicians, orators, and poets,
each of which, the more of duncery they have, and
the more of pride, the greater is their ambition.
And how notoriously soever dull they be, they
meet with their admirers ; nay, the more silly they
are the higher they are extolled. Folly, as we
have before intimated, never failing of respect and
esteem. If therefore every one, the more ignorant
he is, the greater satisfaction he is to himself, and
the more commended by others, to what purpose is
it to sweat and toil in the pursuit of true learning,
which shall cost so many gripes and pangs of the
brain to acquire, and when obtained, shall only
make the laborious student more uneasy to him-
self, and less acceptable to others ?

As nature in her dispensation of coriceitedness
has dealt with private persons, so has she given a
particular smatch of self-love to each country and
nation. Upon this account it is that the English
challenge the prerogative of having the most hand-
some women, of the being most accomplished in the
skill of music, and of keeping the best tables. The
Scotch brag of their gentility, and pretend the

100 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

genius of their native soil inclines them to be good
disputants. The French think themselves remark-
able for complaisance and good breeding. The
Sorbonists of Paris pretend before any others to
have made the greatest proficiency in polemic divi-
nity. The Italians value themselves for learning
and eloquence. And, like the Grecians of old,
account all the world barbarians in respect of them-
selves ; to which piece of vanity the inhabitants of
Rome are more especially addicted, pretending
themselves to be owners of all those heroic virtues,
which their city so many ages since was deservedly
famous for. The Venetians stand upon their birth
and pedigree. The Grecians pride themselves in
having been the first inventors of most arts, and in
their country being famed for the product of so
many eminent philosophers, The Turks, and all the
other refuse of Mahometism, pretend they profess
the only true religion, and laugh at all Christians
for superstitious, narrow-souled fools. The Jews to'
this day expect their Messias as devoutly as they
believe in their first prophet Moses. The Spaniards
challenge the repute of being accounted good
soldiers. And the Germans are noted for their tall,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 101

proper stature, and for their skill in magic. But
not to mention any more, I suppose you are already
convinced how great an improvement and addition
to the happiness of human life is occasioned by
self-love. Next step to which is flattery : for as
self-love is nothing but the coaxing up of ourselves,
so the same currying and humouring , of others is
termed flattery.

Flattery, it is true, is now looked upon as a $ce*<S
dalous name, but it is by such only as mind words
more than things. They are prejudiced against it
upon this account, because they suppose it jostles
out all truth and sincerity? Whereas indeed its
property is quite contrary, as appears from the
examples of several brute creatures. What is more
fawning than a spaniel ? And yet what is more
faithful to his master? What is more fond and
loving than a tame squirrel? And yet what is
more sporting and inoffensive ? This little frisking
creature is kept up in a cage to play withal, while
lions, tigers, leopards, and such other savage em-
blems of rapine and cruelty are shown only for state
and rarity, and otherwise yield no pleasure to their
respective keepers.

102 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

There is indeed a pernicious destructive sort of
flattery wherewith rookers and sharks work their
several ends upon such as they can make a prey of,
by decoying them into traps and snares beyond re-
covery. But that which is the effect of folly is of
a much different nature. It proceeds from a soft-
ness of spirit,. and a flexibleness of good humour,
'and cGmefr far.iiearer to virtue than that other ex-
'ijpei?ie oi friendship, namely, a stiff, sour, dogged
moroseness. It refreshes our .minds when tired,
enlivens them when melancholy, reinforces them
when languishing, invigorates them when heavy,
recovers them when sick, and pacifies them when
rebellious. It puts us in a method how to procure
friends, and how to keep them. It entices children
to swallow the bitter rudiments of learning. It
gives a new ferment to the almost stagnated souls
of old men ; it both reproves and instructs prin-
ciples without offence under the mask of commenda-
tion. In short, it makes every man fond and in-
dulgent of himself, which is indeed no small part of
each man's happiness; and at the same time renders
him obliging and complaisant in all company, where

8

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 10S

it is pleasant to see how the asses rub arid scratch
one anotherj

This, again, is a great accomplishment to an
orator, a greater to a physician, and the only one
to a poet. In fine, it is the best sweetener to all
afflictions, and gives a true relish to the otherwise
insipid enjoyments of our whole life. Ay, but, say
you, to flatter is to deceive ; and to deceive is very
harsh and hurtful. No, rather just contrary ; no-
thing is more welcome and bewitching than the
being deceived. They are much to be blamed for
an undistinguishing head, that make a judgment of
things according to what they are in themselves,
when their whole nature consists barely in the
opinions that are had of them.

For all sublunary matters are enveloped in such
a cloud of obscurity, that the short-sightedness of
human understanding cannot pry through and ar-
rive to any comprehensive knowledge of them.
Hence the sect of academic philosophers have
modestly resolved, that all things being no more
than probable, nothing can be known as certain ;
or if there could, yet would "IF but interrupt and
abate from the pleasure of a more happy ignorance.

104 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Finally, our souls are so fashioned and moulded,
that they are sooner captivated by appearances
than by real truths ; of which, if any one would
demand an example, he may find a very familiar
one in churches, where, if what is delivered from
the pulpit be a grave, solid, rational discourse, all
the congregation grow weary, and fall asleep, till
their patience be released. Whereas if the preacher,
pardon the impropriety of the word, the prater I
would have said, be zealous, in his thumps of the
cushion, antic gestures, and spend his glass in the
telling of pleasant stories, his beloved shall then
stand up, tuck their hair behind their ears, and be
very devoutly attentive.

So among the saints, those are most resorted to
who are most romantic and fabulous. As, for in-
stance, a poetic St. George, a St. Christopher, or a
St. Barbara, shall be oftener prayed to than St.
Peter, St. Paul, nay, perhaps than Christ himself;
but this, it is possible, may more properly be re-
ferred to another place.

In the mean wrhile observe what a cheap pur-
chase of happiness is made by the strength of
fancy. For whereas many things even of incon-

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 105

siderable value, would cost a great deal of pains
and perhaps pelf, to procure ; opinion spares
charges, and yet gives us them in as ample a man-
ner by conceit, as if we possessed them in reality.
Thus he who feeds on such a stinking dish of fish,
as another must hold his nose at a yard's distance
from, yet if he feed heartily, and relish them palat-
ably, they are to him as good as if they were fresh
caught. Whereas, on the other hand, if any one
be invited to never so dainty a joul of sturgeon, if
it go against his stomach to eat any, he may sit a
hungry, and bite his nails with greater appetite
than his victuals.

If a woman be never so ugly and nauseous, yet if
her husband can but think her handsome, it is all^L
one to him as if she really were so. If any mairx
have never so ordinary and smutty a draught, yet
if he admires the excellency of it, and can suppose
it to have been drawn by some old Appelles, or
modern Vandyke, he is as proud of it as if it had
really been done by one of their hands. I knew a
friend of mine that presented his bride with several
false and counterfeit stones, making her believe
that they were right jewels, and cost him so many

7

106 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

hundred thousand crowns. Under his mistake the-
poor woman was as choice of pebbles, and painted
glass, as if they had been so many natural rubies
and diamonds, while the subtle husband saved a
great deal in his pocket, and yet made his wife as
well pleased as if he had been at ten hundred times
the cost.

What difference is there between them that in
the darkest dungeon, can with a platonic brain
survey the whole world in idea, and him that stands
in the open air, and takes a less deluding prospect
of the universe ? If the beggar in Lucian, that
dreamt he was a prince, had never waked, his
imaginary kingdom had been as great as a real one.
Betweenjiim- therefore that truly is happy, and
XJiim that thmksjiimself so, there is no perceivable
- distinction ; or if any, the fool has the better of it.
First, because his happiness costs him less, standing
him only in the price of a single thought ; and then,
secondly, because he has more fellow-companions
and partakers of his good fortune.

For no enjoyment is comfortable where the
benefit is not imparted to others ; nor is any one
station of life desirable, where we can have no con-

=5

I

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 107

verse with persons of the same condition with our-
selves : and yet this is the hard fate of wise men,
who are grown so scarce, that like Phoenixes, they
appear but one in an age. The Grecians, it is
true, reckoned up seven within the narrow precincts
of their own country ; yet I believe, were they to
cast up their accounts anew, they would not find
a half, nay, not a third part, of one in far larger

Farther, when among the several good properties
of Bacchus this is looked upon as the chief, namely,
that he drowns the cares and anxieties of the mind,
though it be indeed but for a short while. For after
a small nap, when our brains are a little settled, they
all return to their former corrodings. How much
greater is the more durable advantage which I
bring ? While by one uninterrupted fit of being
drunk in conceit, I perpetually cajole the mind
with riots, revels, and all the excess and energy of

joy-
Add to this, that I am so communicative and

bountiful, as to let no one particular person pass
without some token of my favour ; whereas other
deities bestow their gifts sparingly to their elect

108 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

only. Bacchus has not thought fit that every soil
should bear the same juice-yielding grape. Yenus
has not given to all a like portion of beauty.
Mercury endows but few with the knack of an
accomplished eloquence. Hercules gives not to all
the same measure of wealth and riches. Jupiter
has ordained but a few to be born to a kingdom.
Mars in battle gives a complete victory but to one
party ; nay, he often makes them both losers.
Apollo does not answer the expectation of all that
consult his oracles. Jove oft thunders. Phoebus
sometimes shoots the plague, or some other infec-
tion, at the point of his darts. And Neptune
swallows down more than he bears up. Not to
mention their Ve-Jupiters, their Plutos, their Ate
goddess of loss, their evil geniuses, and such other
monsters of divinity, as had more of the hangman
than the god in them, and were worshipped only
to deprecate that hurt which used to be inflicted
by them.,

I say, not to mention these, I am that high and
mighty goddess, whose liberality is of as large an
extent as her omnipotence. I give to all that ask. \
I never appear sullen, nor out of humour, nor ever

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 109

demand any atonement or satisfaction for the omis-
sion of any ceremonious punctilio in my worship.
I do not storm or rage, if mortals, in their addresses
to the other gods pass me by unregarded, without
the acknowledgment of any respect or application ;
whereas all the other gods are so scrupulous and
exact, that it often proves less dangerous manfully
to despise them, than srieakingly to attempt the
difficulty of pleasing them. Thus some men are of
that captious, froward humour, that a man had
better be wholly strangers to them, than never so
intimate friends.

Well, but there are noire, say you, build any
altars, or dedicate any temple to Folly. I admire,
as I have befor^4niirimted^riTaTthe world should
be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good
natured as to pass by and pardon this seeming
affront, though indeed the charge thereof, as un-
necessary, may well be saved ; for to what purpose
should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense,
cakes, goats, and swine, since all persons every-
where pays me that more acceptable service, which
all divines agree to be more effectual and meritori-
ous, namely, an imitation of my communicable

110 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

attributed ? I do not therefore any way envy
Diana for having her altars bedewed with human
blood. I think myself then most religiously adored,
when my respective devotees, as is their usual
custom, conform themselves to my practice, tran-
scribe my pattern, and so live the copy of me their
original.

And truly this pious devotion is not so much in
use among Christians as is much to be wished it
were. For how many zealous votaries are there
that pay so profound respect to the Virgin Mary,
as to place lighted tapers even at noon day upon
her altars ? And yet how few of them copy after
her untouched chastity, her modesty, and her other
commendable virtues, in the imitation whereof con-
sists the truest esteem of divine worship ? Farther,
why should I desire a temple, since the whole
world is but one ample continued choir, entirely
dedicated to my use and service ? Nor do I want
worshippers at any place where the earth wants not
inhabitants. [

And as to the manner of my worship, I am not
yet so irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by
proxy, and to have my honour intermediately be-

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. . Ill

stowed upon senseless images and pictures, which
quite subvert the true end of religion ; while the
unwary supplicants seldom distinguish betwixt the
things themselves and the objects they represent.
The same respect in the meanwhile is paid to me in
a more legitimate manner ; for to me there are as
many statues erected as there are moving fabrics of
mortality ; [every person, even against his own will,
carrying the image of me, i.e., the signal of Folly
instamped on his countenance. J

I have not therefore the least tempting induce-
ment to envy the more seeming state and splendour
of the other gods, who are worshipped at set times
and places. As Phoebus at Rhodes, Venus in her
Cyprian isle, Juno in the city Argos, Minerva at
Athens, Jupiter on the hill Olympus, Neptune at
Tarentum, and Priapus in the town of Lampsacum.
j While my worship extending as far as my influence,
the whole world is my one altar, whereon the most
valuable incense and sacrifice is perpetually offered
up.

But lest I should seem to speak this with more
of confidence than truth, let us take a nearer view
of. the mode of men's lives, whereby it will be

112 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

rendered more apparently evident what largesses I
everywhere bestow, and how much I am respected
and esteemed of persons, from the highest to the
basest quality. For the proof whereof, it being
too tedious to insist upon each particular, I shall
only mention such in general as are most worthy
the remark, from which by analogy we may easily
judge of the remainder.

And indeed to what purpose would it be singly
to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind,
who beyond all question are entirely on my side ?
And for a token of their vassalage do wear my
livery in so many older shapes, and more newly
invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a
thousand Democrituses would never hold out to
such a laughter as this subject would excite. And
to these thousand must be superadded one more, to
laugh at them as much as they do at the other.

It is indeed almost incredible to relate what
mirth, what sport, what diversion, the grovelling
inhabitants here on earth give to the above-seated
gods in heaven. For these exalted deities spend
their fasting sober hours in listening to those peti-
tions that are offered up, and in succouring such as

'1HE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 113-

they are appealed to by for redress. But when
they are a little entered at a glass of nectar, they
then throw off all serious concerns, and go and
place themselves on the ascent of some promontory
in heaven, and from thence survey the little mole-
hill of earth. And trust me, there cannot be a more
delightsome prospect than to view such a theatre so
stuffed and crammed with swarms of fools.

One falls desperately in love, and the more he is-
slighted the more does his spaniel-like passion in-
crease ; another is wedded to wealth rather than to
a wife ; a third pimps for his own spouse, and is—
content to be a cuckold^sojie may wejirJiisJiorns^(
gilt ; a fourth is haunted with a jealousy of his
visiting neighbours ; another sobs and roars, and
plays the child, for the death of a friend or relation ;
and lest his own tears should not rise high enough
to express the torrent of his grief, he hires other
mourners to accompany the corpse to the grave,
and sing its requiem in sighs and lamentations ;
another hypocritically weeps at the funeral of one
whose death at heart he rejoices for ; here a glut-
tonous cormorant, whatever he can scrape up,
thrusts all into his guts to pacify the cryings of

114 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

a hungry stomach ; there a lazy wretch sits yawn-
ing and stretching, and thinks nothing so desirable
as sleep and idleness.

Some are extremely industrious in other men's
business, and sottishly neglectful of their own ;
some think themselves rich because their credit is
great, though they can never pay, till they break,
and compound for their debts ; one is so covetous
that he lives poor to die rich ; one for a little un-
certain gain will venture to cross the roughest seas,
and expose his life for the purchase of a livelihood ;
another will depend on the plunders of war, rather
than on the honest gains of peace ; some will close
with and humour such warm old blades as have a
good estate, and no children of their own to bestow
it upon ; others practice the same art of wheedling
upon good old women, that have hoarded and
coffered up more bags than they know how to dis-
pose of; both of these sly flatteries make fine sport
for the gods, when they are beat at their own wea-
pons, and as oft happens are gulled by those very
persons they intended to make a prey of.

There is another sort of base scoundrels in
gentility, such scraping merchants, who although,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 115

for the better vent of their commodities they lie,
swear, cheat, and practice all the intrigues of
dishonesty, yet think themselves no way inferior
to persons of the highest quality, only because they
have raked together a plentiful estate. And there
are not wanting such insinuating hangers on, as
shall caress and compliment them with the greatest
respect, in hopes to go snacks in some of their dis-
honest gains. There are -others so infected with
the philosophical paradox of banishing property,
and having all things in common, that they make
no conscience of fastening on, and purloining what-
ever they can get, and converting it to their own
use and possession. There are some who are rich
only in wishes, and yet while they barely dream of
vast mountains of wealth, they are as happy as if
their imaginary fancies commenced real truths.

Some put on the best side outermost, and starve
themselves at home to appear gay and splendid
abroad. One with an open-handed freedom spends
all he lays his fingers on ; another with a
logic-fisted gripingness catches at and grasps
all he can come within the reach of; one apes
it about in the streets to court popularity ;

116 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

another consults his ease, and sticks to the confine-
ment of a chimney-corner ; many others are tugging
hard at law for a trifle, and drive on an endless
suit, only to enrich a deferring judge, or a knavish
advocate ; one is for new-modelling a settled
government; another is for some notahle heroical
attempt ; and a third hy all means must travel a
pilgrim to Rome, Jerusalem, or some shrine of a
saint elsewhere, though he have no other business
than the paying of a formal impertinent visit,
leaving his wife and children to fast, while he him-
self forsooth is gone to pray.

In short, if, as Lucian fancies Menippus to have
done heretofore, any man could now again look
down from the orb of the moon, he would see thick
swarms as it were of flies and gnats, that were
quarrelling with each other, justling, fighting,
fluttering, skipping, playing, just new produced,
soon after decaying, and then immediately vanish-
ing ; and it can scarce be thought how many
tumults and tragedies so inconsiderate a creature
as man does give occasion to, and that in so short a
space as the small span of life ; subject to so many
casualties, that the sword, pestilence, and other

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 117

epidemic accidents, shall many times sweep away
whole thousands at a brush. \"^\

But hold. I should but expose myself too far,
and incur the guilt of being roundly laughed at,
if I proceed to enumerate the several kinds of
the folly of the vulgar. [_I shall confine therefore
my following discourse only to such as challenge
the repute of wisdom, and seemingly pass for
men of the soundest intellectuals. Among whom
the Grammarians present themselves in the front,
a sort of men who would be the most miserable,
the most slavish, and the most hateful ' of all
persons, if I did not in some way alleviate the
pressures and miseries of their profession by bless-
ing them with a bewitching sort of madness. For
they are not only liable to those five curses, which
they so oft recite from the first five verses of
Homer, but- to five hundred more of a worse nature ;
as always damned to thirst and hunger, to be
choked with dust in their unswept schools. Schools,
shall I term them, or rather elaboratories, nay,
bridewells, and houses of correction.

To wear out themselves in fret and drudgery ; to
be deafened with the noise of gaping boys ; and in

118 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

short, to be stifled with heat and stench ; and yet
they cheerfully acquiesce in all these inconveniences,
and, by the help of a fond conceit, think themselves
as happy as any men living. Taking a great pride
and delight in frowning and looking big upon the
trembling urchins, in boxing, slashing, striking
with the ferula, and in the exercise of all their
other methods of tyranny. While thus lording it
over a parcel of young, weak chits, they imitate
the Cuman ass, and think themselves as stately as
a lion, that domineers over all the inferior herdL_J

Elevated with this conceit, they can hold filth
and nastiness to be an ornament ; can reconcile
their nose to the most intolerable smells; and finally,
think their wretched slavery the most arbitrary
kingdom, which they would not exchange for the
jurisdiction of the most sovereign potentate. And
they are yet more happy by a strong persuasion of
their own parts and abilities ; for thus when their
employment is only to rehearse silly stories, and
poetical fictions, they will yet think themselves
wiser than the best experienced philosopher ; nay,
they have an art of making ordinary people, such

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 119

as their school boys' fond parents, to think them
as considerable as their own pride has made them.

Add hereunto this other sort of ravishing plea-
sure. When any of them has found out who was
the mother of Anchises, or has lighted upon some
old unusual word, such as bubsequa bovinator,
manticulator, or other like obsolete cramp terms ;
or can, after a great deal of poring, spell out the
inscription of some battered monument ; Lord I
what joy, what triumph, what congratulating their
success, as if they had conquered Africa, or taken
Baby] on the Great ! When they recite some of
their frothy, bombast verses, if any happen to ad-
mire them, they are presently flushed with the
least hint of commendation, and devoutly thank
Pythagoras for his grateful hypothesis, whereby
they are now become actuated with a descent of
Virgil's poetic soul.

Nor is any divertisement more pleasant, than
when they meet to flatter and curry one another; yet
they are so critical, that if any one hap to be guilty
of the least slip, or seeming blunder, another shall
presently correct him for it, and then to it they go
in a tongue-combat with all the fervour, spleen,

120 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

and eagerness imaginable. May Priscian himself
be my enemy if what I am now going to say be not
exactly true. I knew an old Sophister that was a
Grecian, a latinist, a mathematician, a philosopher,
a musician, and all to the utmost perfection, who,
after threescore years' experience in the world, had
spent the last twenty of them only in drudging to
conquer the criticisms of grammar^ and made it the
chief part of his prayers, that his life might be so
long spared till he had learned how rightly to
distinguish betwixt the eight parts of speech, which
no grammarian, whether Greek or Latin, had yet
accurately done. If any chance to have placed
that as a conjunction which ought to have been
used as an adverb, it is a sufficient alarm to raise a
war for doing justice to the injured word.

And since there have been as many several
grammars, as particular grammarians, nay, more, for
Aldus alone wrote five distinct grammars for his
own share, the schoolmaster must be obliged to
consult them all, sparing for no time nor trouble,
though never so great, lest he should be otherwise
posed in an unobserved criticism, and so by an
irreparable disgrace lose the reward of all his toil.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 121

It is indifferent to me whether you call this folly
or madness, since you must needs confess that it is
by my influence these school-tyrants, though in
never so despicable a condition, are so happy in
their own thoughts, that they would not change
fortunes with the most illustrious Sophi of Persia.

The Poets, however somewhat less beholden to
me, own a professed dependence on me, being a
sort of lawless blades, that by prescription claim a
license to a proverb, while the whole intent of their
profession is only to smooth up and tickle the ears
of fools. That by mere toys and fabulous shams,
with which however ridiculous they are so bolstered
up in an airy imagination, as to promise them-
selves an everlasting name, and promise, by their
balderdash, at the same time to celebrate the
never-dying memory of others. To these rapturous
wits self-love and flattery are never-failing atten-
dants ; nor do any prove more zealous or constant
devotees to folly.

The Rhetoricians likewise, though they are
ambitious of being ranked among the Philosophers,
yet are apparently of my faction, as appears among
other arguments, by this more especially. In that

122 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

among their several topics of completing the art of
oratory, they all particularly insist upon the knack
of jesting, which is one species of folly ; as is evident
from the books of oratory wrote to Herennius, put
among Cicero's work, but done by some other un-
known author. And in Quintilian, that great mas-
ter of eloquence, there is one large chapter spent
in prescribing the methods of raising laughter. In
short, they may well attribute a great efficacy to
folly, since on any argument they can many times
by a slight laugh over what they could never
seriously confute.

Of the same gang are those scribbling fops, who
think to eternize their memory by setting up for
authors. Among which, though they are all some
way indebted to me, yet are those more especially
so, who spoil paper in blotting it with mere trifles
and impertinences. For as to those graver drudgers
to the press, that write learnedly, beyond the reach
of an ordinary reader, who durst submit their
labours to the review of the most severe critic, these
are not so liable to be envied for their honour, as
to be pitied for their sweat and slavery. They
make additions, alterations, blot out, write anew,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 123

amend, interline, turn it upside down, and yet can
never please their fickle judgment, but that they
shall dislike the next hour what they penned the
former ; and all this to purchase the airy commen-
dations of a few understanding readers, which at
most is but a poor reward for all their fastings,
watchings, confinements, and brain-breaking tor-
tures of invention. Add to this the impairing of
their health, the weakening of their constitution,
their contracting sore eyes, or perhaps turning
stark blind ; their poverty, their envy, their debar-
ment from all pleasures, their hastening on old age,
their untimely death, and what other inconveni-
ences of a like or worse nature can be thought
upon : and yet the recompense for all this severe
penance is at best no more than a mouthful or two
of frothy praise.

These, ns they are more laborious, so are they
less happy than those other hackney scribblers
which 1 first mentioned, who never stand much to
consider. !>' it write what comes next at a venture,
knowing that the more silly their composures are,
the moiv they will be bought up by the greater
number of readers, who are fools and blockheads.

/ T-' V.

y / '
y 4%°

124 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

And if they hap to be condemned by some few
judicious persons, it is an easy matter by clamour
to drown their censure, and to silence them by
urging the more numerous commendations of

- others.

They are^yet the wisest who transcribe whole
discourses from others, and then reprint them as
their own. By doing so they mak£ a cheap and
easy seizure to themselves of that reputation which
cost the first author so much time and trouble to
procure. If they are at any time pricked a little in
conscience for fear of discovery, they feed them-
selves however with this hope, that if they be at
;. last found plagiaries, yet at least for some time

• they have the credit of passing for the genuine
authors.

It is pleasant to see how all these several writers
are puffed up with the least blast of applause, espe-
cially if they come to the honour of being pointed
at as they walk along the streets, when their several
pieces are laid open upon every bookseller's stall,
when their names are embossed in a different char-
acter upon the title-page, sometime only with the
two first letters, and sometime with fictious cramp

I

0}

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 125

terms, which few shall understand the meaning of.
And of those that do, all shall not agree in their
verdict of the performance. Some censuring, others
approving it, men's judgments being as different as
their palates, that being toothsome to one which is
unsavoury and nauseous to another. Though it is
a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors itcT put
feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of
their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus
one styles himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a
third Polycrates, another Thrasymachus, and so on.
By the same liberty we may ransack the whole
alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come
next to hand.

It is farther very pleasant when these coxcombs
employ their pens in writing congratulatory epistles,
poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein
one shall be complimented with the title of Alcseus,
another shall be charactered for the incomparable
Callimachus ; this shall be commended for a com-
pleter orator than Tully himself ; a fourth shall be
told by his fellow-fool that the divine Plato comes
short of him for a philosophic soul.

Sometime again they take up the cudgels, and

126 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

challenge out an antagonist, and so get a name by
a combat at dispute and controversy, wbile the
unwary readers draw sides according to their
different judgments. The longer the quarrel holds
the more irreconcilable it grows ; and when both
parties are weary, they each pretend themselves
the conquerors, and both lay claim to the credit of
coming off with victory. These fooleries make
sport for wise men, as being highly absurd,
ridiculous and extravagant. True, but yet these
paper-combatants, by my assistance, are so flushed
with a conceit of their own greatness, that they
prefer the solving of a syllogism before the sacking
of Carthage ; and upon the defeat of a poor
objection carry themselves more triumphant than
the most victorious Scipio.

Nay, even the learned and more judicious, that
have wit enough to laugh at the other's folly, are
very much beholden to my goodness ; which,
except ingratitude have drowned their ingenuity,
they must be ready upon all occasions to confess.
Among these I suppose the lawyers will shuffle in
for precedence, and they of all men have the
greatest conceit of their own abilities. They will

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 127

argue as confidentially as if they spoke gospel
instead of law ; they will cite you six hundred
several precedents, though not one of them come
near to the case in hand. They will muster up the
authority of judgments, deeds, glosses, and reports,
and tumble over so many musty records, that they
make their employ, though in itself easy, the
greates^""* slavery imaginable; always accounting
that the best plea which they have took most
pains for.

To these, as bearing great resemblance to them,
may be added Logicians and Sophisters, fellows
that talk as much by rote as a parrot ; who shall
run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay,
silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder
clappers than those of the steeple. And if their
unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault
it would admit of some excuse ; but they are at
the same time so fierce and quarrelsome, that they
will wrangle bloodily for the least trifle, and be so
over intent and eager, that they many times lose
their game in the chase and fright away that truth
they are hunting for. Yet self-conceit makes these
nimble disputants such doughty champions, that

128 rIHE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

armed with three or four close-linked syllogisms 9
they shall enter the lists with the greatest masters
of reason, and not question the foiling of them in
an irresistible baffle. Nay, their obstinacy makes
them so confident of their being in the right,
that all the arguments in the world shall never
f convince them to the contrary.
/ Next to these come the Philosophers in their
long beards and short cloaks, who esteem them-
selves the only favourites of wisdom, and look upon
the rest of mankind as the dirt and rubbish of the
creation. Yet these men's happiness is only a
frantic craziness of brain ; they build castles in the
air, and infinite worlds in a vacuum. They will
give you to a hair's breadth the dimensions of the
sun, moon, and stars, as easily as they would do
that of a flaggon or pipkin. They will give a
punctual account of the rise of thunder, of the
origin of winds, of the nature of eclipses, and of all
the other obstrusest difficulties in physics, without
the least demur or hesitation, as if they had been
admitted into the cabinet council of nature, or had
been eye-witnesses to all the accurate methods of
creation ; though alas nature does but laugh at all

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 129-

their puny conjectures. For they never yet made
one considerable discovery, as appears in that they
are unanimously agreed in no one point of the
smallest moment ; nothing so plain or evident but
what by some or other is opposed and contradicted.

But though they are ignorant of the artificial
contexture of the least insect, they vaunt however,
and brag that they know all things, when indeed
they are unable to construe the mechanism of their
own body. Nay, when they are so purblind as not
to be able to see a stone's cast before them, yet
they shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying-
out ideas, universals, separate forms, first matters,
quiddities, formalities, and a hundred such like
niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their
eyes extremely magnifying, all the art of optics
could never make them discernible.

But they then most despise the low grovelling
vulgar when they bring out their parallels, triangles,
circles, and other mathematical figures, drawn up
in battalia, like so many spells and charms of con-
juration in muster, with letters to refer to the
explication of the several problems ; hereby raising
devils as it were, only to have the credit of

130 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

laying them, and amusing the ordinary spectators
into wonder, because they have not wit enough
to understand the juggle. Of these some under-
take to profess themselves judicial astrologers,
pretending to keep correspondence with the
stars, and so from their information can resolve
any query. And though it is all but a pre-
sumptuous imposture, yet some to be *sure will be
so great fools as to believe them.
' The divines present themselves next. But it
may perhaps be most safe to pass them by, and not
to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject
would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be
very hazardous ; for they are a sort of men gener-
ally very hot and passionate ; and should I provoke
them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full
cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I
stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand
me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunica-
tion, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such
as lift up a hand against them.

It is true, no men own a less dependence on me,
yet have they reason to confess themselves indebted
for no small obligations. For it is by one of my

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 131

properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves,
with their elder brother Paul, caught up into the
third heaven, from whence, like shepherds indeed,
they look down upon their flock, the laity, grazing
as it were, in the vales of the world below. They
fence themselves in with so many surrounders of
magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, pro-
positions explicit and implicit, that there is no
falling in with them. Or if they do chance to be
urged to a seeming non-plus, yet they find out so
many evasions, that all the art of man can never
bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall
give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of
being baffled.

[JThey will cut asunder the toughest argument
with as much ease as Alexander did the gordian
knot ; they will thunder out so many rattling
terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction.
They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the
most intricate mysteries ; they will tell you to a
tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence
in the creation of the universe ; they will explain
the precise manner of original sin being derived
from our first parents. They will satisfy you in

132 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a
time, our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin's
womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer
how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay,
these are accounted trivial, easy questions ; they
have yet far greater difficulties behind, which not-
withstanding they solve with as much expedition
as the former.

As namely, whether supernatural generation re-
quires any instant of time for its acting ? Whether
Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct
relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother ?
Whether this proposition is possible to be true,
the first person of the Trinity hated the second ?
Whether God, who took our nature upon him in
the form of a man, could as well have become a
woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone ? And
were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared
in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he
should then have preached his gospel ? Or how
have been nailed to the cross ? Whether if St.
Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time
our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the conse-
crated bread would have been transubstantiated

.

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 133

into the same body that remained on the tree ?
Whether in Christ's corporal presence in the sacra-
mental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from
his Godhead ? Whether after the resurrection we
shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life ?

There are a thousand other more sublimated and
refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities,
formalities, quiddities, hseccities, and such like ab-
strusities, as one would think no one could pry into,
except he had not only such cat's eyes as to see
best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty
as to see through an inch-board, and spy out what
really never had any being. Add to these some of
their tenets and opinions, which are so absurd and
extravagant, that the wildest fancies of the Stoics,
which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes,
seem in comparison just and rational. As their
maintaining, that it is a less aggravating fault to
kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set
a stitch on the Sabbath-day ; or, that it is more
justifiable to do the greatest injury imaginable to
others, than to tell the least lie ourselves.

And these subtleties are alchymized to a more
refined sublimate by the abstracting brains of their

134 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

several schoolmen ; the Realists, the Nominalists,
the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occainists, the
Scotists. These are not all, but the rehearsal of a
few only, as a specimen of their divided sects ; in
each of which there is so much of deep learning, so
much of unfathomable difficulty, that I believe the
apostles themselves would stand in need of a new
illuminating spirit, if they were to engage in any
controversy with these new divines. St. Paul, no
question, had a full measure of faith ; yet when he
lays down faith to be the substance of things not
seen, these men carp at it for an imperfect definition,
and would undertake to teach the apostles better
logic. Thus the same holy author wanted for
nothing of the grace of charity, yet, say they, he
describes and defines it but very inaccurately, when
he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first
epistle to the Corinthians, j

The primitive disciples were very frequent in
administering the holy sacrament, breaking bread
from house to house ; yet should they be asked of
the Terminus a quo and the Terminus ad quern, the
nature of trans ubstantiat ion ? The manner how one
body can be in several places at the same time ?

[( CNIVERSITl

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 135

The difference betwixt the several attributes of
Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in the con-
secrated bread ? What time is required for the
transubstantiating the bread into flesh ? How it
can be done by a short sentence pronounced by the
priest, which sentence is a species of discreet
quantity, that has no permanent punctum ? Were
they asked these, and several other confused
queries, I do not believe they could answer so
readily as our mincing school-men now-a-days take
a pride to do. They were well acquainted with the
Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook^ to prove
that she was presep^^Timftaeul^eTrom original^
stints stomp, nf nnr djvvnps very hotly contend for.

St. Peter had the keys grveirtcrfetmT^nd that
by our Saviour himself, who had never entrusted
him except he had known him capable of their
manage and custody. And yet it is much to be
questioned whether Peter was sensible of that
subtlety broached by Scotus, that he may have the
key of knowledge effectually for others, who has no
knowledge actually in himself.' Again, the disciples
baptized all nations, and yet never taught what was
the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of

136 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguish-
ing between a delible and an indelible character in
this sacrament. They worshipped in the spirit, fol-
lowing their master's injunction, God is a spirit, and
they which worship him, must worship him in spirit,
and in truth ; yet it does not appear that it was
ever revealed to them how divine adoration should
be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour in
heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall,
drawn with two figures held out, a bald crown,
and a circle round his head. To reconcile these
intricacies to an appearance of reason requires
three-score years' experience in metaphysics.

Farther, the apostles often mention Grace, yet
never distinguish between gratia, gratis data, and
gratia gratiftcans. They earnestly exhort us like-
wise to good works, yet never explain the differ-
ence between Opus operans, and Opus operatum.
They very frequently press and invite us to seek
after charity, without dividing it into infused and
acquired, or determining whether it be a substance
or an accident, a created or an uncreated being.
They detested sin themselves, and warn others from
the commission of it ; and yet I am sure they

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 137

could never have defined so dogmatically, as the
Scotists have since done.

St. Paul, who in other's judgment is no less the
chief of the apostles, than he was in his own the
chief of sinners, who being bred at the feet of
Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar
than any of the rest, yet he often exclaims against
vain philosophy, warns us from doting about
questions and strifes of words, and charges us to
avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions
of science falsely so called. Which he would not
have done, if he had thought it worth his while to
have become acquainted with them, which he
might soon have been, the disputes of that age
being but small, and more intelligible sophisms, in
reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are
now improved to.

But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so
modest, that if they meet with any passage in St.
Paul, or any other penman of holy writ, which is
not so well modelled, or critically disposed of, as
they could wish, they will not roughly condemn
it, but bend it rather to a favourable interpretation,
out of reverence to antiquity, and respect to the

9

138 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

holy scriptures. Though indeed it were unreason-
able to expect anything of this nature from the
apostles, whose lord and master had given unto
them to know the mysteries of God, but not those
of philosophy. If the same divines meet with
anything of like nature unpalatable in St.
Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Hierom, or others of the
fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their
authority, and very fairly resolve that they lay
under a mistake.

Yet these ancient fathers were they who confuted
both the Jews and Heathens, though they both
obstinately adhered to their respective prejudices ;
they confuted them I say, yet by their lives and
miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms.
And the persons they thus proselyted were down-
right honest, well meaning people, such as under-
stood plain sense better than any artificial pomp of
reasoning. Whereas if our divines should now set
about the gaining converts from paganism by their '
metaphysical subtleties, they would find that most
of the persons they applied themselves to were
either so ignorant as not at all to apprehend them,
or so impudent as to scoff and deride them. Or

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 139

finally, so well skilled at the same weapons, that
they would be able to keep their pass, and fence off
all assaults of conviction. And this last way the
victory would be altogether as hopeless, as if two
persons were engaged of so equal strength, that it
were impossible any one should overpower the
oilier.

If my judgment might be taken, I would advise
Christians, in their next expedition to a holy war,
instead of those many unsuccessful legions, which
they have hitherto sent to encounter the Turks and
Saracens, that they would furnish out their
clamorous Scotists, their obstinate Occamists, their
invincible Albertists, and all their forces of tough,
crabbed and profound disputants. The engagement,
I fancy, would be mighty pleasant, and the victory
we may imagine op. our side not to be questioned.
For which of the enemies would not veil their
turbants at so solemn an Appearance ? Which of
the fiercest Janizaries would noK throw away his
scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the
interposition of so glorious an army ?

I suppose you mistrust I speak all this by way
of jeer and irony ; and well I may, since among

140 THE PEAISE OF FOLLY.

divines themselves there are some so ingenious
as to despise these captious and frivolous imper-
tinences. They look upon it as a kind of profane
sacrilege, and a little less than blasphemous im-
piety, to determine of such niceties in religion,
•as ought rather to be the subject of an humble
vand uncon tradict ing faith, than of a scrupulous
ajid inquisitive reason. They abhor a defiling the
mysteries of Christianity with an intermixture of
heathenish philosophy, and judge it very improper
to reduce divinity to an obscure speculative science,
whose end is such a happiness as can be gained
only by the means of practice.

But alas, those notional divines, however con-
demned by the soberer judgment of others, are yet
mightily pleased with themselves, and are so labori-
ously intent upon prosecuting their crabbed studies,
that they cannot afford so much time as to read a
single chapter in any one book of the whole bible.
And while they thus trifle away their mis-spent
hours in trash and babble, they think that they
support the Catholic Church with the props and
pillars of propositions and syHogisms, no less elfec-

I

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 141

tuallj than Atlas is feigned by the poets to sustain
on his shoulders the burden of a tottering world.

Their privileges, too, and authority are very con-
siderable. They can deal with any text of scripture
as with a nose of wax, knead it into what shape
best suits their interest ; and whatever conclusions
they have dogmatically resolved upon, they would
have them as irrepealably ratified as Solon's laws,
and in as great force as the very decrees of the
papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate
to their decisions, they will bring him on his knees
to a recantation of his impudence. They shall
pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposi-
tion is scandalous, that irreverent ; this has a
smack of heresy, and that is bald and improper ;
so that it is not the being baptised into the church,
the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to
St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay,
or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that shall make a
man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage
of these novices in learning, who have blessed the
world no doubt with a great many discoveries,
which had never come to light if they had not
struck the fire of subtlety out of the flint of ob-

142 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

scurity. These fooleries sure must be a happy
employ.

Farther, they make as many partitions and
divisions in hell and purgatory, and describe as
many different sorts and degrees of punishment
as if they were very well acquainted with the
soil and situation of those infernal regions. And
to prepare a seat for the blessed above, they in-
vent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven,
so wide and spacious as if they had purposely con-
trived it, that the glorified saints might have room
enough to walk, to feast, or to take any recreation.

With these, and a thousand more such like toys,
their heads are more stuffed and swelled than Jove,
when he went big of Pallas in his brain, and was
forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan's axe to ease
him of his teeming burden. Do not wonder, there-
fore, that at public disputations they bind their
heads with so many caps one over another ; for this
is to prevent the loss of their brains, which would
otherwise break out from their uneasy confinement.
It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to
listen to these divines in their hotly managed dis-
putations. To see how proud they are of talking

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 143

such hard gibberish, and stammering out such
blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps
may sometimes gape at, but seldom apprehend.

And they take such a liberty in their speaking
of Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness
of syntax or concord ; pretending it is below the
majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue, and
be tied to the slavish observance of the rules of
grammar. Finally, they take a vast pride, among
other citations, to allege the authority of their
respective master, which word they bear as pro-
found a respect to as the Jews did to their ineffable
tetragrammaton, and therefore they will be sure
never to write it any • otherwise than in great
letters, MAGISTER NOSTEB. And if any
happen to invert the order of the words, and say,
noster magister, instead of magister noster, they will
presently exclaim against him as a pestilent heretic
apd underminer of the catholic faith.
//The next to these are ^nottiBissoj't of brainsick
fools, who style themselves monks and of religious,
orders, though they assume both titles very un-
justly. For as to the last, they have very little
religion in them ; and as to the former, the etymo-

144 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

logy of the word monk implies a solitariness, or
being alone ; whereas they are so thick abroad that
we cannot pass any street or alley without meeting
them. Now I cannot imagine what one degree of
men would be more hopelessly wretched, if I did
not stand their friend, and buoy them up in that
lake of misery, which by the engagements of a holy
vow they have voluntarily immerged themselves in.
But when these sort of men are so unwelcome to
others, as that the very sight of them is thought
ominous, I yet make them highly in love with
themselves, and fond admirers of their own happi-
ness. The first step whereunto they esteem a pro-
found ignorance, thinking carnal knowlege a great
enemy to their spiritual welfare, and seem confi-
ydent of becoming greater proficients in divine
<^ mysteries the less they are poisoned with any
human learning. They imagine that they bear a
sweet consort with the heavenly choir, when they
tone out their daily tally of psalms, which they
rehearse only by rote, without permitting their
understanding or affections to go along with their
voice.

Among these, some make a good profitable trade

I

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 145

of beggary, going about from house to house, not
like the apostles, to break, but to beg, their bread.
Nay, thrust into all public-houses, come aboard the
passage-boats, get into the travelling waggons, and
omit no opportunity of time or place for the craving
people's charity ; doing a great deal of injury to
common highway beggars by interloping in their
traffic of alms. And when they are thus volun-
tarily poor, destitute, not provided with two coats,
nor with any money in their purse, they have the
impudence to pretend that they imitate the first
disciples, whom their master expressly sent out in
such an equipage.

It is pretty to observe how they regulate all their
actions as it were by weight and measure to so
exact a proportion, as if the whole loss of their
religion depended upon the omission of the least
punctilio. Thus they must be very critical in the
precise number of knots to the tying on of their
sandals ; what distinct colours their respective
habits, and what stuff made of ; how broad and long
their girdles ; how big, and in what fashion, their
hoods ; whether their bald crowns be to a hair's-

146 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

breadth of the right cut ; how many hours they
must sleep, at what minute rise to prayers, etc.

And these several customs are altered accord-
ing to the humours of different persons and places.
While they are sworn to the superstitious obser-
vance of these trifles, they do not only despise all
others, but are very inclinable to fall out among
themselves ; for though they make profession of an
apostolic charity, yet they will pick a quarrel, and
be implacably passionate for such poor provoca-
tions, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for
the wearing of clothes a little too darkish coloured,
or any such nicety not worth the speaking of.
Some are so obstinately superstitious that they will
wear their upper garment of some coarse dog's hair
stuff, and that next their skin as soft as silk. But
others, on the contrary, will have linen frocks
outermost, and their shirts of wool or hair. Some,
again, will not touch a piece of money, though they
make no scruple of the sin of drunkermsss-and the
lust of the flesh.

All their several orders are mindful of nothing
more than of their being distinguished from each
other by their different customs and habits. They

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 147

seem, indeed, not so careful of becoming like Christ,
and of being known to be his disciples, as the being
unlike to one another, and distinguishable for fol-
lowers of their several founders. A great part of
their religion consists in their title. Some will be
called cordeliers, and these subdivided into capu-
chines, minors, minims, and mendicants ; some,
again, are styled Benedictines, others of the order
of St. Bernard, others of that of St, Bridget ; some
are Augustin monks, some Willielmites, and others
Jacobists, as if the common name of Christian were
too mean and vulgar.

Most of them place their greatest stress for sal- >
vation on a strict conformity to their foppish cere-
monies, and a belief of their legendary traditions.
Wherein they fancy to have acquitted themselves
with so much of supererogation, that one heaven
can never be a condign reward for their meritorious
life ; little thinking that the Judge of all the earth
at the last day shall put them off, with a " Who
hath required these things at your hands ? " and
call them to account only for the stewardship of
his legacy, which was the precept of love and
charity.

148 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

It will be pretty to hear their pleas before the
great tribunal. One will brag how he mortified his
carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish. Another
will urge that he spent most of his time on earth
in the divine exercise of singing psalms. A third
will tell how many days he fasted, and what severe
penance he imposed on himself for the bringing his
body into subjection. Another shall produce in his
own behalf as many ceremonies as would load a
fleet of merchantmen. A fifth shall plead that in
threescore years he never so much as touched a
piece of money, except he fingered it through a
thick pair of gloves. A sixth, to testify his
former humility, shall bring along with him his
sacred hood, so old and nasty, that any seaman had
rather stand bare headed on the deck, than put it
on to defend his ears in the sharpest storms. The
next that comes to answer for himself shall plead,
that for fifty years together, he had lived like a
sponge upon the same place, and was content never
to change his homely habitation. Another shall
whisper softly, and tell the judge he has lost his
voice by a continual singing of holy hymns and
anthems. The next shall confess how he fell into

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3

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 149

a lethargy by a strict, reserved, and sedentary life.
And the last shall intimate that he has forgot to
speak, by having always kept silence, in obedience
to the injunction of taking heed lest he should have
offended with his tongue.

But amidst all their fine excuses our Saviour
shall interrupt them with this answer, Woe unto
you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, verily I know
you not ; I left you but one precept, of loving one
another, which I do not hear any one plead he has
faithfully discharged ; I told you plainly in my
gospel, without any parable, that my father's
kingdom was prepared not for such as should lay
claim to it by austerities, prayers, or fastings, but
for those who should render themselves worthy of
it by the exercise of faith, and the offices of charity ;
I cannot own such as depend on their own merits
without a reliance on my mercy ; as many of you
therefore as trust to the broken reeds of your own
deserts may even go search out a new heaven, for
you shall never enter into that, which from the
foundations of the wrorld was prepared only for such
as are true of heart.

When these monks and friars shall meet with

150 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

such a shameful repulse, and see that ploughmen
and mechanics are admitted into that kingdom,
from which they themselves are shut out, how
sneakingly will they look, and how pitifully slink
away ? Yet till this last trial they had more
comfort of a future happiness, because more hopes
of it than any other men. And these persons are
not only great in their own eyes, but highly
esteemed and respected by others, especially those
of the order of mendicants, whom none dare to offer
any affront to, because as confessors they are in-
trusted with all the secrets of particular intrigues,
which they are bound by oath not to discover. Yet
many times, when they are almost drunk, they can-
not keep their tongue so far within their head, as not
to be babbling out some hints, and showing them-
selves so full, that they are in pain to be delivered.
If any person give them the least provocation
they will sure to be revenged of him, and in their
next public harangue give him such shrewd wipes
and reflections, that the whole congregation must
needs take notice at whom they are levelled. Nor
will they ever desist from this way of declaiming,
till their mouth be stopped with a bribe to hold

rlHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 151

their tongue. All their preaching is mere stage-
playing, and their delivery the very transports of
ridicule and drollery. Good Lord ! how mimical
are their gestures ? What heights and falls in their
voice ? What toning, what bawling, what singing,
what squeaking, what grimaces, making of mouths,
apes' faces, and distorting of their countenance ; and
this art of oratory as a choice mystery, -they convey
down by tradition to one another.

The manner of it I may adventure thus farther
to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they
implore the divine assistance, which they borrowed
from the solemn custom of the poets ; then if their
text suppose be of charity, they shall take their
exordium as far off as from a description of the
river Nile in Egypt ; or if they are to discourse of
the mystery of the Cross, they shall begin with a
story of Bell and the Dragon ; or perchance if their
subject be of fasting, for an entrance to their sermon
they shall pass though the twelve signs of the
zodiac; or lastly, if they are to preach of faith, they
shall address themselves in a long mathematical ac-
count of the quadrature of the circle.

I myself once heard a great fool, a great scholar

152 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

,Xwould have said, undertaking in a laborious dis-
course to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity,
in the unfolding whereof, that he might shew his
wit and reading, and together satisfy itching ears,
he proceeded in a new method, as by insisting on
the letters, syllables, and proposition, on the con-
cord of noun and verb, and that of noun substantive,
and noun adjective. The auditors all wondered,
and some mumbled to themselves that hemistitch
of Horace,

Why all this needless trash ?

But at last he brought it thus far, that he could
demonstrate the whole Trinity to be represented
by these first rudiments of grammar, as clearly and
plainly as it was possible for a mathematician
to draw a triangle in the sand. And for the
making of this grand discovery, this subtle divine
had plodded so hard for eight months together,
that he studied himself as blind as a beetle, the
intenseness of the eye of his understanding over-
shadowing and extinguishing that of his body.
And yet he did not at all repent him of his blind-
ness, but thinks the loss of his sight an easy pur-
chase for the gain of glory and credit.

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 153

/I heard at another time a grave divine, of
fourscore years of age at least, so sour and hard-
favoured, that one would be apt to mistrust that
it was Scotus Redivivus ; he taking upon him to
treat of the mysterious name, JESUS, did very
subtly pretend that in the very letters was con-
tained, whatever could be said of it. For first, its
being declined only with three cases, did expressly
point out the trinity of persons, then that the nomi-
native ended in S, the accusative in M, and the
ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery,
viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was
the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle,
and the idtimus, or end of all things. There was
yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, which
was by dividing the word JESUS into two parts,
and separating the S in the middle from the two
extreme syllables, making a kind of pentameter, the
word consisting of five letters. And this inter-
medial S being in the Hebrew alphabet called sin,
which in the English language signifies what the
Latins term peccatum, was urged to imply that
the holy Jesus should purify us from all sin and
wickedness?!

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154 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Thus did the pulpiteer cant, while all the con-
gregation, especially the brotherhood of divines,
were so surprised at his odd way of preaching,
that wonder served them, as grief did Niobe,
almost turned them into stones. I among the
rest ; as Horace describes Priapus viewing the
enchantments of the two sorceresses, Canidia
and Sagane ; could no longer contain, but let fly
a cracking report of the operation it had upon
me. These impertinent introductions are not
without reason condemned ; for of old, whenever
Demosthenes among the Greeks, or Tully among
the Latins, began their orations with so great a
digression from the matter in hand, it was always
looked upon as improper and unelegant, and
indeed, were such a long-fetched exordium any
token of a good invention, shepherds and plough-
men might lay claim to the title of men of greatest
parts, since upon any argument it is easiest for them
to talk what is least to the purpose.

These preachers think their preamble, as we may
well term, it, to be the most fashionable, when it is
farthest from the subject they propose to treat of,
while each auditor sits and wonders what they

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 155

drive at, and many times mutters out the complaint
of Virgil : —

Whither does all this jargon tend ?

In the third place, when they come to the division
of their text, they shall give only a very short touch
at the interpretation of the words, when the fuller
explication of their sense ought to have been their
only province. Fourthly, after they are a little
entered, they shall start some theological queries,
far enough off from the matter in hand, and bandy
it about pro and con till they lose it in the heat of
scuffle.

^And here they shall cite their doctors invincible,
subtle, seraphic, cherubic, holy, irrefragable, and
such like great names to confirm their several asser-
tions. Then out they bring their syllogisms, their
majors, their minors, conclusions, corollaries, sup-
positions, and distinctions, that will sooner terrify
the congregation into an amazement, than persuade
them into a conviction. Now comes the fifth act,
in which they must exert their utmost skill to come
off with applause. Here therefore they fall a telling
some sad lamentable story out of their legend, or
some other fabulous history, and this they descant

156 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically^
And so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse?
which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever
Horace could describe in his De Arte Poetica, when
he began : —

Humano Capiti, etc.

Their praying is altogether as ridiculous as
their preaching ; for imagining that in their
addresses to heaven they should set out in a low
and tremulous voice, as a token of dread and
reverence, they begin therefore with such a soft
whispering as if they were afraid any one should
overhear what they said. But when they are
gone a little way, they clear up their pipes by
degrees, and at last bawl out so loud as if with Baal's
priests, they were resolved to awake a sleeping
god. Arid then again, being told by rhetoricians
that heights and falls, and a different cadency in
pronunciation, is a great advantage to the setting
off any thing that is spoken, they will sometimes,
as it were, mutter their words inwardly, and then
of a sudden hollo them out, and be sure at last, in
such a flat, faltering tone, as if their spirits were
spent, and they had run themselves out of breath.

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 157

Lastly, they have read that most systems of
rhetoric treat of the art of exciting laughter ;
therefore, for the effecting of this, they will sprinkle
some jests and puns that must pass for ingenuity,
though they are only the froth and folly of affected-
ness. Sometimes they will nibble at the wit of
being satirical, though their utmost spleen is so
toothless, that they suck rather than bite, tickle
rather than scratch or wound. Nor do they ever
flatter more than at such times as they pretend to
speak with greatest freedom.

Finally, all their actions are so buffbonish and
mimical, that any would judge the^had learned all
their tricks of mountebanks and stage -players, who
in action, it is true, may perhaps outdo them, but
in oratory there is so little odds between both, that
it is hard to determine which seems of longest
standing in the schools of eloquence. Yet these
preachers, however ridiculous, meet with such
hearers, who admire them as much as the people of
Athens did Demosthenes, or the citizens of Rome
could do Cicero. Among which admirers are chiefly
shopkeepers, and women, whose approbation and
good opinion they only court ; because the first, if

158 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

they are humoured, give them some snacks out of
unjust gain ; and the last come and ease their grief
to them upon all pinching occasions, especially
when their husbands are any ways cross or unkind.

Thus much, I suppose, may suffice to make you
sensible how much these cell -hermits and recluses
are indebted to my bounty. Who, when they
tyrannise over the consciences of the deluded laity
with fopperies, juggles, and impostures, yet think
themselves as eminently pious as St. Paul, St.
Anthony, or any other of the saints. But these
stage-divines, not less ungrateful disowners of their
obligations to folly, than they are impudent pre-
tenders to the profession of piety, I willingly take
my leave of, and pass now Jx> kings, ]prjnces, and
courtiers, who, paying me a devout acknowledg-
ment, may justly challenge back the respect of
being mentioned and taken notice of by me.

And first, had they wisdom enough to make a
true judgment of things, they would find their own
condition to be more despicable and slavish than
that of the most menial subjects. For certainly
none can esteem perjury or parricide a cheap
purchase for a crown, if he does but seriously

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 159

reflect on that weight of cares a princely diadem is
loaded with. He that sits at the helm of govern-
ment acts in a public capacity, and so must sacrifice
all private interest to the attainment of the common'
good. He must himself be conformable to those
laws his prerogative exacts, or else he can expect
no obedience paid them from others ; he must have
a strict eye over all his inferior magistrates and
officers, or otherwise it is to be doubted they will
but carelessly discharge their respective duties.

Every king, within his own territories, is placed
for a shining example as it were in the firmament
of his wide-spread dominions, to prove ^either a
glorious star of benign influence, if his behaviour
be remarkably just and innocent ; or else to impend
as a threatening comet, if his blazing power be
pestilent and hurtful. Subjects move in a darker
sphere, and so their wanderings and failings are less
discernible. Whereas princes, being fixed in a
more exalted orb, and encompassed with a brighter
dazzling lustre, their spots are more apparently
visible, and their eclipses, or other defects,
influential on all that is inferior to them. Kings
are baited with so many temptations and oppor-

160 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

tunities to vice and immorality, such as are high
feeding, liberty, flattery, luxury, and the like, that
they must stand perpetually on their guard, to
fence off those assaults that are always ready to be
made upon them.

In fine, abating from treachery, hatred, dangers,

fear, and a thousand other mischiefs impending on

crowned heads, however uncontrollable they are

this side heaven ; yet after their reign here they

must appear before a supremer judge, and there be

called to an exact account for the discharge of that

great stewardship which was committed to their

trust. If princes did but seriously consider, and

consider they would if they were but wise, these

Smany hardships of a royal life, they would be so

^perplexed in the result of their thoughts thereupon.,

"^&s scarce to eat or sleep in quiet.

But now by my assistance they leave all these

\cares to the gods, and mind only their own ease

\and pleasure, and therefore will admit none to their

attendance but who will divert them with sport

and mirth, lest they should otherwise be seized and

damped with the surprisal of sober thoughts. They

think they have sufficiently acquitted themselves

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 161

in the duty of governing, if they do but ride con-
stantly a-hunting, breed up good race-horses, sell
places and offices to those of the courtiers that will
give most for them, and find out new ways for in-
vading of their people's property, and hooking in a
larger revenue to their own exchequer. For the
procurement whereof they will always have some
pretended claim and title ; that though it be
manifest extortion, yet it may bear the show of law
and justice. And then they daub over their
oppression with a submissive, flattering carriage,
that they may so far insinuate into the affections of
the vulgar, as they may not tumult nor rebel, but
patiently crouch to burdens and exactions.

Let us feign now a person ignorant of the laws-
and constitutions of that realm he lives in, an
enemy to the public good, studious only for his own
private interest, addicted wholly to pleasures and
delights, a hater of learning, a professed enemv to
liberty and truth, careless andN^unmindftil^tJi the
common concerns, taking all the measures of justice
and honesty from the false beam of self-interest
and advantage, after this hang about his neck a
gold chain, for an intimation that he ought to have

162 I HE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

all virtues linked together. Then set a crown of
gold and jewels on his head, for a token that he
ought to overtop and outshine others in all com-
mendable qualifications ; next, put into his hand a
royal sceptre for a symbol of justice and integrity ;
lastly clothe him with purple, for an hieroglyphic
of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth.
If a prince should look upon this portraiture, and
draw a comparison between that and himself,
certainly he would be ashamed of his ensigns
of majesty, and be afraid of being laughed out of
them.

ext to kings themselves may come their
courtiers, who, though they are for the most part
a base, servile, cringing, low-spirited sort of flat-
terers, yet they look big, swell great, and have
high thoughts of their honour and grandeur.
Their confidence appears upon all occasions ;
yet in this one thing they are very modest, in
that they are content to adorn their bodies with
gold, jewels, purple, and other glorious ensigns of
virtue and wisdom, but leave their minds empty
and unfraught ; and taking the resemblance of good-

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 163

ness to themselves, turn over the truth and reality
of it to others.

They think themselves mighty happy in that they
can call the king master, and be allowed the famili-
arity of talking with him. That they can volubly
rehearse his several titles of august highness, super-
eminent excellence, and most serene majesty, that
they can boldly usher in any discourse, and that
they have the complete knack of insinuation and
flattery ; for these are the arts that make them
truly genteel and noble. If you make a stricter
enquiry after their other endowments, you shall
find them mere sots and dolts. They will sleep
generally till noon, and then their mercenary chap-
lains shall come to their bed-side, and entertain
them perhaps with a short morning prayer. As soon
as they are dressed they must go to breakfast, and
when that is done, immediately to dinner. When
the cloth is taken away, then to cards, dice, tables,
or some such like diversion. After this they must
have one or two afternoon banquets, and so in the
evening to supper. When they have supped then
begins the game of drinking ; the bottles are mar-

164 THE PEAISE OF FOLLY.

shalled, the glasses ranked, and round go the
healths and bumpers till they are carried to bed.

And this is the constant method of passing away
their hours, days, months, years, and ages. I have
many times took great satisfaction by standing in
the court, and seeing how the tawdry butterflies
vie upon one another. The ladies shall measure
the height of their humours by the length of their
trails, which must be borne up by a page behind.
The nobles jostle one another to get nearest to the
king's elbow, and wear gold chains of that weight
and bigness as require no less strength to carry
than they do wealth to purchase.

And now for some reflections upon popes^. car-
dinals, and bishops, who in pomp and splendour
<have almost equalled if not outgone secular princes.
Now if any one consider that their upper crotchet
of white linen is to signify their unspotted purity
and innocence ; that their forked mitres, with both
divisions tied together by the same knot, are to
denote the joint knowledge of the Old and New
Testament. That their always wearing gloves, re-
presents their keeping their hands clean and unde-
nted from lucre and covetousness; that the pastoral

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 165

staff implies the care of a flock committed to their
charge ; that the cross carried before them expresses
their victory over all carnal affections. He that
considers this, and much more of the like nature,
must needs conclude they are entrusted with a very
weighty and difficult office. But alas, they think
it sufficient if they can but feed themselves; and as
to their flock, either commend them to the care of
Christ himself, or commit them to the guidance of
some inferior vicars and curates. Not so much as
remembering what their name of bishop imports, to
wit, labour, pains, and dilligence, but by base
simoniacal contracts, they are in a profane sense
Episcopij i.e., overseers of their own gain and income.
So cardinals, in like manner, if they did but con-
sider that the church supposes them to succeed in
the room of the apostles ; that therefore they must
behave themselves as their predecessors, and so not
be lords, but dispensers of spiritual gifts, of the dis-
posal whereof they must one day render a strict
account. Or if they would but reflect a little on
their habit, and thus reason with themselves, what
means this white upper garment, but only an un-
spotted innocence ? What signifies my inner purple,

166 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

but only an ardent love and zeal to God ? What
imports my outermost pall, so wide and long that
it covers the whole mule when I ride, nay, should
be big enough to cover a camel, but only a diffusive
charity, that should spread itself for a succour and
protection to all, by teaching, exhorting, comforting,
reproving, admonishing, composing of differences,
courageously withstanding wicked princes, and
sacrificing for the safety of our flock our life and
blood, as well as our wealth and riches. Though
indeed riches ought not to be at all possessed by
such as boast themselves successors to the apostles,
who were poor, needy, and destitute. I say, if they
did but lay these considerations to heart they would
never be so ambitious of being created to this honour,
they would willingly resign it when conferred upon
them, or at least would be as industrious, watchful
and laborious, as the primitive apostles were.

Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend
themselves Christ's vicars, if they would but imi-
tate his exemplary life, in the being employed in
an unintermitted course of preaching. In the being
attended with poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a
contempt of this world ; if they did but consider

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 167

the import of the word pope, which signifies a
father ; or if they did but practice their surname of
most holy, what order or degrees of men would be
in a worse condition ? There would be then no
such vigorous making of parties, and buying of
votes, in the conclave upon a vacancy of that see.

And those who, by bribery or other indirect
courses, should get themselves elected, would never
secure their sitting firm in the chair by pistol,
poison, force, and violence. How much of their
pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed
with one dram of wisdom ? Wisdom, did I say ?
Nay, with one grain of that salt which our Saviour
bid them not lose the savour of. All their riches,
all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter's
patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their
licences, their indulgences, their long train and
attendants, see in how short a compass I have
abbreviated all their marketing of religion ; in a
word, all their perquisites would be forfeited and
lost ; and in their room would succeed watchings,
fastings, tears, prayers, sermons, hard studies,
repenting sighs, and a thousand such like severe
penalties. Nay, what's yet more deplorable, it

168 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

would then follow, that all their clerks, amanu-
enses, notaries, advocates, proctors, secretaries,
the offices of grooms, ostlers, serving-men, pimps,
and somewhat else which for modesty's sake I
shall not mention ; in short, all these troops of
attendants, which depends on his holiness, would
all lose their several employments. This indeed
would be hard, but what yet remains would be
more dreadful. The very Head of the Church, the
spiritual prince, would then be brought from all his
splendour to the poor equipage of a scrip and staff.
But all this is upon the supposition on]y that
they understood what circumstances they are
placed in ; whereas now, by a wholesome neglect
of thinking, they live as well as heart can wish.
Whatever of toil and drudgery belongs to their
office that they assign over to St. Peter, or St.
Paul, who have time enough to rnind it ; but if
there be any thing of pleasure and grandeur, that
they assume to themselves, as being hereunto
called. So that by my influence no sort of people
live more to their own ease and content. They
think to satisfy that Master they pretend to serve,
our Lord and Saviour, with their great state and

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 169

magnificence, with the ceremonies of instalments,
with the titles of reverence and holiness, and with
exercising their episcopal function only in blessing
and cursing.

LJThe working of miracles is old and out -dated ;
to teach the people is too laborious ; to interpret
scripture is to invade the prerogative of the school-
men ; to pray is too idle ; to shed tears is cowardly
and unmanly ; to fast is too mean and sordid ; to
be easy and familiar is beneath the grandeur of him
who, without being sued to and entreated, will
scarce give princes the honour of kissing his toe ;
finally, to die for religion is too self-denying ; and
to be crucified as their Lord of life, is base and igno-
minious. Their only weapons ought to be those of
the Spirit ; and of these indeed they are mighty
liberal, as of their interdicts, their suspensions,
their denunciations, their aggravations, their
greater and lesser excommunications, and their
roaring bulls, that fright whomever they are
thundered against. And these most holy fathers
never issue them out more frequently than against
those who, at the instigation of the devil, and not
having the fear of God before their eyes, do feloni-

ii

170 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

ously and maliciously attempt to lessen and impair
St. Peter's patrimony.

And though that apostle tells our Saviour in the
gospel, in the name of all the other disciples, we
have left all and followed you, yet they challenge
as his inheritance, fields, towns, treasures, and large
dominions. For the defending whereof, inflamed
with a holy zeal, they fight with fire and sword, to
the great loss and effusion of Christian blood,
thinking they are apostolical maintainers of Christ's
spouse, the church, when they have murdered all
such as they call her enemies. Though, indeed,
the church has no enemies more bloody and ty-
Xannical than such impious popes, who give dispen-
sations for the not preaching of Christ ; evacuate
the main effect and design of our redemption by
their pecuniary bribes and sales ; adulterate the
gospel by their forced interpretations, and under-
mining traditions ; and lastly, by their lusts and
wickedness grieve the Holy Spirit, and make their
Saviour's wounds to bleed anewTJ

Further, when the Christian church has been all
along first planted, then confirmed, and since estab-
lished by the blood of her martyrs, as if Christ, her

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 171

head, would be wanting in the same methods still
of protecting her, they invert the order, and pro-
pagate their religion now by arms and violence,
which was wont formerly to be done only wifh
patience and sufferings. And though war be so
brutish, as that it becomes beasts rather than men;
so extravagant, that the poets feigned it an effect
of the furies ; so licentious, that it stops the course
of all justice and honesty ; so desperate, that it is
best waged by ruffians and banditti ; and so un-
christian, that it is contrary to the express com-
mands of the gospel. Yet, maugre all this, peace
is too quiet, too inactive, and they must be engaged
in the boisterousness of war.

Among which undertaking popes, you shall have
some so old that they can scarce creep, and yet
they will put on a young, brisk resolution ; will
resolve to stick at no pains, to spare no cost, nor to
waive any inconvenience, so they may involve laws,
religion, peace, and all other concerns, whether
sacred or civil, in unappeasable tumults and dis-
tractions. And yet some of their learned fawning
courtiers will interpret this iiotQrioTrs~Tiuidii6gs for
zeal, and piety, and fortitude, having found out the

172 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

way how a man may draw his sword, and sheathe
it in his brother's bowels, and yet not offend against
the duty of the second table, whereby we are
obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves.

/\-\j is yet uncertain whether these Romish fathers
/ j

have taken example from, or given precedent to,
such other German bishops who, omitting their
ecclesiastical habit, and other ceremonies, appear
openly armed cap-a-pie, like so many champions
and warriors, thinking no doubt that they come
short of the duty of their function, if they die in
any other place than the open field, fighting the
battles of the Lord. The inferior clergy, deeming
it unmannerly not to conform to their patrons and
diocesans, devoutly tug and fight for their tithes
with syllogisms and arguments, as fiercely as with
swords, sticks, stones, or anything that came next
to hand. ^

When they read the rabbies, fathers, or other
ancient writings, how quick-sighted are they in
spying out any sentences that they may frighten
the people with and make them believe that more
than the tenth is due, passing by whatever they
meet with in the same authors that minds them of

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 173

the duty and difficulty of their own office. They
never consider that their shaven crown is a token
that they should pare off and cut away all the
superfluous lusts of this world, and give themselves
wholly to divine meditation. But instead of this,
our bald-pated priests think they have done
enough, if they do but mumble over such a fardel
of prayers ; which it is a wonder if God should
hear or understand, when they whisper them so
softly, and in so unknown a language, which they
can scarce h ear_ or_u n dgrstan d themselves.

This they have in common with other mechanics,
that they are most subtle in the craft of getting
money, and wonderfully skilled in their respective
dues of tithes, offerings, and perquisites. Thus
they are all content to reap the profit, but as to
the burden, that they toss as a ball from one hand
to another, and assign it over to any they can get
or hire. For as secular princes have their judges
and subordinate ministers to act in their name, and
supply their stead, so ecclesiastical governors have
their deputies, vicars, and curates, nay, many times
turn over the whole care of religion to the laity.

The laity, supposing they have nothing to do

174 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

with the church, as if their baptismal vow did not
initiate them members of it, make it over to the
priests. Of the priests, again, those that are
secular, thinking their title implies them to be a
little too profane, assign this task over to the re-
gulars, the regulars to the monks, the monks bandy
it from one order to another, till it light upon the
mendicants. They lay it upon the Carthusians,
which order alone keeps honesty and piety among
them, but really keep them so close that no body
ever yet could see them. Thus the popes, thrust-
ing only their sickle into the harvest of profit, leave
all the other toil of spiritual husbandry to the
bishops, the bishops bestow it upon the pastors, the
pastors on their curates, and the curates commit it
to the mendicants, who return it again to such as
well know how to make good advantage of the
flock, by the benefit of their fleece.

But I would not be thought purposely to ex-
pose the weaknesses of popes and priests, lest I
should seem to recede from my title, and make
a satire instead of a panegyric. Nor let anyone
imagine that I reflect on good princes, by com-
mending of bad ones. I did this only in brief, to

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 175

shew that there is no one particular person can
lead a comfortable life, except he be entered of my
society, and retain me for his friend. Nor indeed
can it be otherwise, since fortune, that empress of
the world, is so much in league and amity with me,
that to wise men she i s ^wa^s^st jngy , and sparing
of her gifts, but is profusely liberal and lavish to
fools. Thus Timotheus, the Athenian commander,
in all his expeditions, was a mirror of good luck,
because he was a little underwitted ; from him was
occasioned the Grecian proverb, " The net fills,
though the fisherman sleeps ;" there is also another
favourable proverb, "The owl flies," an omen of
success.

But against wise men are pointed these ill-abod-
ing proverbs, " Born under a bad planet ; " " He
cannot ride the fore-horse ; " " Ill-gotten goods will
never prosper ; " and more to the same purpose.
But I forbear from any farther proverbializing, lest
I should be thought to have rifled my Erasmus's
adages. To return, therefore, fortune we find still
favouring the blunt, and flushing the forward ;
strokes and smoothes up fools, crowning all their
undertakings with success ; but wisdom makes her

176 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

followers bashful, sneaking, and timorous, and
therefore you see that they are commonly reduced
to hard shifts, must grapple with poverty, cold and
hunger, must lie recluse, despised, and unregarded,
while fools roll in money, are advanced to dignities
and offices, and in a word, have the whole world at
command,

If any one think it happy to be a favourite at
court, and to manage the disposal of places and
preferments, alas, this happiness is so far Jrom
being attainable by wisdom, that the very suspicion
of it would put a stop to all advancement. Has
any man a mind to raise himself a good estate ?
Alas what dealer in the world would ever get a
farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at perjury,
blush at a lie, or stick at any fraud and over-
reaching.

Farther, does any one appear a candidate for
any ecclesiastical dignity ? Why, an ass, or a
plough-jobber, shall sooner gain it than a wise
man. Again, are you in love with any handsome
lady ? Alas, women-kind are so addicted to
folly, that they will not at all listen to the court-
ship of a wise suitor. Finally, wherever there is-

!

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. Ill

any preparation made for mirth and jollity, all wise
men are sure to be excluded the company, lest they
should stint the joy, and dampthe^jiolic. In a
word, to what side soever we turn ourselves, to
popes, princes, judges, magistrates, friends, enemies,
rich or poor, all their concerns are managed by
money, which because it is undervalued by wise
men, therefore, in revenge to be sure, it never
comes at them.

But now, though my praise and commendation
might well be endless, yet it is requisite I should
put some period to my speech. I'll therefore draw
toward an end, when I have first confirmed what I
have said by the authority of several authors.
Which by way of farther proof I shall insist upon,
partly that I may not be thought to have said
more in my own behalf than what will be justified
by others, and partly that the lawyers may not
check me for citing no precedents nor allegations.
To imitate them, therefore, I will produce some re-
ports and authorities, though perhaps, like theirs
too, they are nothing to the purpose.

First, then, it is confessed almost to a proverb,
that the art of dissembling is a very necessary

178 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

accomplishment. And therefore it is a common
verse among schoolboys :—

"To feign the fool when fit occasions rise,
Argues the being more completely wise."

It is easy, therefore, to collect how great a value ought
to be put upon real folly, when the very shadow,
and bare imitation of it, is so much esteemed.
Horace, who in his epistles thus styles himself: —

"My sleek-skinn'd corpse as smooth as if I lie
'Mong th' fatted swine of Epicurus's sty."

This poet gives this advice in one of his odes : —

" Short Folly with your counsels mix."

The epithet of short, it is true, is a little improper.
The same poet, again, has this passage elsewhere :-—

" Well- timed Folly has a sweet relish."

And in another place : —

' ' I'd rather much be censured for a fool,
Than feel the lash and smart of wisdom's school."

Homer praises Telemachus as much as any one of
his heroes, and yet he gives him the epithet of
Silly. And the Grecians generally use the same
word to express children, as a token of their in-
nocence. And what is the argument of all Homer's
Iliads, but only, as Horace observes : —

"They kings and subjects dotages contain?"

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 179

How positive also is Tully's commendation that
all places are filled with fools ? Now every excel-
lence being to be measured by its extent, the good-
ness of folly must be of as large compass as those
universal places she reaches to. But perhaps
christians may slight the authority of a heathen.
I could therefore, if I pleased, back and confirm the
truth hereof by the citations of several texts of
scripture ; though herein it were perhaps my duty
to beg leave of the divines, that I might so far in-
trench upon their prerogative.

Supposing we grant this, the task seems so diffi-
cult as to require the invocation of some aid and
assistance. Yet because it is unreasonable to put
the muses to the trouble and expense of so tedious
a journey, especially since the business is out of
their sphere, I shall choose rather, while I am
acting the divine, and venturing in their polemic
difficulties, to wish myself for such time animated
with Scotus, and his bristling and prickly soul,
which I would not care how afterwards it returned
to his body, though for refinement it were stopped
at a purgatory by the way. I cannot but wish
that I might wholly change my character, or at

180 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

least that some grave divine, in my stead, might
rehearse this part of the subject for me ; for truly
I suspect that somebody will accuse me of plunder-
ing the closets of those reverend men, while I pre-
tend to so much divinity, as must appear in my
following discourse. Yet however, it may not seem
strange, that after so long and frequent a converse,
I have gleaned some scraps from the divines. Since
Horace's wooden god by hearing his master read
Homer, learned some words of Greek ; and Lucian's
cock, by long attention, could readily uncterstand
what any man spoke. But now to the purpose,
wishing myself success.

Ecclesiastes doth somewhere confess that there
are an infinite number of fools. Now when he
speaks of an infinite number, what does he else but
imply, that herein is included the whole race of
mankind, except some very few, which I know
not whether ever any one had yet the happiness to

see ?

The prophet Jeremiah speaks yet more plainly
in his tenth chapter, where he saith, that " Every
man is brutish in his knowledge." He just before
attributes wisdom to God alone, saying that the

4

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 181

" Wise men of the nations are altogether brutish
and foolish." And in the preceding chapter he
gives this seasonable caution, " Let not the wise
man glory in his wisdom ; " the reason is obvious,
because no man hath truly whereof to glory. But
to return to Ecclesiastes, when he saith, " Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity." what else can we imagine
his meaning to be, than that our whole life is
nothing but one continued interlude of Folly ?

This confirms that assertion of Tully, which is
delivered in that noted passage we but just now
mentioned, namely, that " All places swarm with
fools." Farther, what does the son of Sirach mean
when he saith in Ecclesiasticus, that the " Fool is
changed as the moon," while the " Wise man is
fixed as the sun," than only to hint out the folly of
all mankind ; and that the name of wise is due to
no other but the all-wise God ? For all inter-
preters by Moon understand mankind, and by Sun
that fountain of all light, the Almighty. The
same sense is implied in that saying of our Saviour
in the gospel, " There is none good but one, that is
God;" for if whoever is not wise must be conse-
quently a fool, and if, according to the Stoics, every

182 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

man be wise so far only as he is good, the meaning
of the text must be, all mortals are unavoidably
fools ; and there is none wise but one, that is God.
Solomon also in the fifteenth chapter of his
proverbs hath this expression, " Folly is joy to him
that is destitute of wisdom ; " plainly intimating,
that the wise man is attended with grief and
vexation, while the foolish only roll in delight and
pleasure. To the same purpose is that saying of
his in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, "In much
wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow." Again, it is
confessed by the same preacher in the seventh
chapter of the same book, " That the heart of the
wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of
fools is in the house of mirth." This author him-
self had never attained to such a portion of
wisdom, if he had not applied himself to a searching
out the frailties and infirmities of human nature ;
as, if you believe not me, may appear from his own
words in his first chapter, " I gave my heart to
know wisdom, and to know madness and folly ; "
where it is worthy to be observed that as to the
order of words, Folly for its advantage is put in the

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 183

last place. Thus Ecclesiastes wrote, and thus
indeed did an ecclesiastical method require ; namely,
that what has the precedence in dignity should
come hindermost in rank and order, according to
the tenor of that evangelical precept, " The last
shall be first, and the first shall be last."

And in Ecclesiastes likewise, whoever was author
of the holy book which bears that name, in the
forty-fourth chapter, the excellency of folly above
wisdom is positively acknowledged ; the very words
I shall not cite, till I have the advantage of an
answer to a question I am proposing, this way of
interrogating being frequently made use of by Plato
in his dialogues between Socrates, and other dis-
putants. I ask you then, what is it we usually
hoard and lock up, things of greater esteem and
value, or those which are more common, trite, and
despicable ? Why are you so backward in making
an answer ? Since you are so shy and reserved,
I'll take the Greek proverb for a satisfactory reply ;
namely, " Foul water is thrown down the sink ; "
which saying, that no person may slight it, may
be convenient to advertise that it comes from no

184 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

meaner an author than that oracle of truth, Aristotle
himself.

And indeed there is no one on this side Bedlam
so mad as to throw out upon the dunghill his gold
and jewels, but rather all persons have a close re-
pository to preserve them in, and secure them under
all the locks, bolts, and bars, that either art can
contrive, or fears suggest. Whereas the dirt,
pebbles, and oyster-shells, that lie scattered in the
streets, ye trample upon, pass by, and take no
notice of. If then what is more valuable be coffered
up, and what legs so lies unregarded,it follows, that
accordingly Folly should meet with a greater esteem
than wisdom, because that wise author advises us
to the keeping close and concealing the first, and
exposing or laying open the other. As take him
now in his own words, " Better is he that hideth
his folly than him that hideth his wisdom."

Beside, the sacred text does oft ascribe innocence
and sincerity to fools, while the wise man is apt to
be a haughty scorner of all such as he thinks or
censures to have less wit than himself. For so I
understand that passage in the tenth chapter of
Ecclesiastes, " When he that is a fool walketh

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 185

by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to
every one that he is a fool." Now what greater
argument of candour or ingenuity can there be, than
to demean himself equal with all others, and not
think their deserts any way inferior to his own.
Folly is no such scandalous attribute, but that the
wise Agur was not ashamed to confess it, in the
thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, "JSurely I am more
brutish than any man, and have not the under-
standing of a man."

Nay, St. Paul himself, that great doctor of the
Gentiles, writing to his Corinthians, readily owns i
the name saying, " If any man speak as a fool, I
am more ; " as if to have been less so had been a
reproach and disgrace. But perhaps I may be
censured for mis-interpreting this text by some
modern annotators, who like crows pecking at^one ^j
another's eyes, fincT'fault, and correct all that went V\.
before them, pretend: ^ScfeTEeir"own glosses i~Wj[/ "
contaln'"llTe~^Dnly Lrue""Tiird genuine explication^
among whom my Erasmus, whom I cannot but
mention with respect, may challenge the second
place, if not the precedency.

This citation, say they, is purely impertinent ;

12

186 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

the meaning of the apostle is far different from
what you dream of. He would not have these
words so understood, as if he desired to be thought
a greater fool than the rest, but only when he had
before said, " Are they ministers of Christ ? so am
I ; " as if the equalling himself herein to others
had been too little, he adds, " I am more," thinking
a bare equality not enough, unless he were even
superior to those he compares himself with.

This he would have to be believed as true ; yet
lest it might be thought offensive, as bordering
too much on arrogance and conceit, he tempers
and alleviates it by the covert of Folly. I speak,
says he, as a fool, knowing it to be the peculiar
privilege of fools to speak the truth, without giving
offence. But what St. Paul's thoughts were when
he wrote this, I leave for them to determine. In
my own judgment at least I prefer the opinion of
the good old tun-bellied divines, with whom it's
safer and more creditable to err, than to be in the
right with smattering, raw, novices.

Nor indeed should any one mind the late
critics any more than the senseless chattering of
a daw. Especially since one of the most eminent

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 187

of them, whose name I advisedly conceal, magis-
terially and dogmatically descanting upon his text,
" Are they the ministers of Christ V I speak as a
fool, I am more, makes a distinct chapter, and,
which without good store of logic he could never
have done, adds a new section, and then gives this
paraphrase, which I shall verbatim recite, that you
may have his words materially, as well as formally
his sense, for that's one of their babbling distinc-
tions. "I speak as a fool," that is, if the equalling
myself to those false apostles would have been con-
strued as the vaunt of a fool, I will willingly be
accounted a greater fool, by taking place of them,
and openly pleading, that as to their ministry, I
not only come up even with them, but outstrip and
go beyond them. Though this same commentator
a little after, as it were forgetting what he had just
before delivered, tacks about and shifts to another
interpretation.

But why do I insist upon any one particular
example, when in general it is the public charter of
all divines, to mould and bend the sacred oracles
till they comply with their own fancy, spreading
them, as Heaven by its Creator, like a curtain,

188 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

closing together, or drawing them back, as they
please ? Thus indeed St. Paul himself minces and
mangles some citations he makes use of, and seems
to wrest them to a different sense from what they
were first intended for, as is confessed by the great
linguist, St. Hierom. Thus when that apostle saw
at Athens the inscription of an altar, he draws from
it an argument for the proof of the Christian
religion ; but leaving out great part of the sentence,
which perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced
his cause, he mentions only the two last words, viz.,
" To the unknown God ;" and this too not without
alteration, for the whole inscription runs thus,—
" To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all
foreign and unknown Gods."

'Tis an imitation of the same pattern, I will
warrant you, that our young divines, by leaving
out four or five words in a place, and putting a
false construction on the rest, can make any
passage serviceable to their own purpose ; though
from the coherence of what went before, or fol-
lows after, the genuine meaning appears to be
either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory
to what they would thrust and impose upon it. In

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 189

which knack the divines are grown now so expert,
that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous of
an encroachment upon what was formerly their sole
privilege and practice.

And indeed what can they despair of proving,
since the fore-mentioned commentator, I had almost
blundered out his name, but that I am restrained
by fear of the same Greek proverbial sarcasm, did
upon a text of St. Luke put an interpretation, no
more agreeable to the meaning of the place, than
one contrary quality is to another ? The passage
is this, when Judas's treachery was preparing to be
executed, and accordingly it seemed requisite that
all the disciples should be provided to guard and
secure their assaulted master, our Saviour, that he
might piously caution them against reliance for
his delivery on any worldly strength, asks them :
Whether in all their embassy they lacked anything,
when he had sent them out so unfurnished for the
performance of a long journey, that they had not
so much as shoes to defend their feet from the in-
juries of flints and thorns, or a scrip to carry a
meal's meat in. And when they had answered that
they* lacked nothing, he adds, "But now he that

190 1HE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

hath a purse let him take it, and likewise a script ;
and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment,
and buy one."

Now when the whole doctrine of our Saviour in-
culcates nothing more frequently than meekness,
patience, and a contempt of this world, is it not
plain what the meaning of the place is ? Namely,
that he might now dismiss his ambassadors in a
more naked, defenceless condition, he does not only
advise them to take no thought for shoes or scrip,
but even commands them to part with the very
clothes from their back, that so they might have
the less incumbrance and entanglement in the going
through their office and /unction. "He cautions
them, it is true, to be furnished with a sword, yet
not such a carnal one as rogues and highwaymen
make use of for murder and bloodshed, but with
the sword of the Spirit, which pierces through the
heart, and searches out the innermost retirements
of the soul, lopping off all our lust, and corrupt
affections, and leaving nothing in possession of our
breast but piety, zeal, and devotion. This, I say,
in my opinion is the most natural interpretation.
But see how that divine misunderstands the

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 191

place ; by sword, says he, is meant, defence
against persecution ; by scrip, or purse, a sufficient
quantity of provision ; as if Christ had, by
considering better of it, changed his mind in
reference to that mean equipage, which he had
before sent his disciples in, and therefore came now
to a recantation of what he had formerly instituted.
Or as if he had forgot what in time past he had
told them, " Blessed are you when men shall revile
you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil
against you for my sake/' Render not evil for evil,
for blessed are the meek, not the cruel. As if he
had forgot that he encouraged them by the
examples of sparrows and lilies to take no
thought for the morrow ; he gives them now
an other v lesson, and charges them, rather than go
" without a sword, to sell their garment, and buy
one ; " as if the going cold and naked were more
excusable than the marching unarmed. And as
this author thinks all means which are requisite for
the prevention or retaliation of injuries to be
implied under the name of sword, so under that of
scrip, he would have everything to be compre-

192 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

hended, which either the necessity or conveniency
of life requires. //

Thus does this provident commentator furnish
out the disciples with halberts, spears, and guns,
for the enterprise of preaching Christ crucified ; he
supplies them at the same time with pockets, bags,
and portmanteaus, that they might carry their
cupboards as well as their bellies always about
them. He takes no notice how our Saviour after-
wards rebukes Peter for drawing that sword which
he had just before so strictly charged him to buy ;
nor that it is ever recorded that the primitive
Christians did by no ways withstand their heathen
persecutors otherwise than with tears and prayers,
which they would have exchanged more effectually
for swords and bucklers, if they had thought this
text would have borne them out.

There is another, and he of no mean credit,
whom for respect to his person I shall forbear to
name, who commenting upon that verse in the
prophet Habakkuk, "I saw the tents of Cushan in
affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian
did tremble," because tents were sometimes made
of skins, he pretended that the word tents did here

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

signify the skin of St. Bartholomew, who was
flayed for a martyr.

I myself was lately at a divinity disputation,
where I very often pay my attendance, where one
of the opponents demanded a reason why it should
be thought more proper to silence all heretics by
sword and faggot, rather than convert them by
moderate and sober arguments ? A certain cynical
old blade, who bore the character of a divine,
legible in the frowns and wrinkles of his face, not
without a great deal of disdain answered, that it
was the express injunction of St. Paul himself, in
those directions to Titus, "A man that is an heretic,
after the first and second admonition, reject/'
quoting it in Latin, where the word reject is devita,
while all the auditory wondered at this citation,
and deemed it no way applicable to his purpose ;
he at last explained himself, saying, that devita
signified de vita tollendum hereticum, a heretic
must be slain. Some smiled at his ignorance, but
others approved of it as an orthodox comment.

And however some disliked that such violence
should be done to so easy a text, our hair-splitting
and irrefragable doctor went on in triumph. To

194 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

prove it yet, says he, more undeniably, it is com-
manded in the old law " Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live." Now then every Maleficus, or
witch, is to be killed, but an heretic is Maleficus,
which in the Latin translation is put for a witch.
All that were present wondered at the ingenuity of
the person, and very devoutly embraced his opinion,
never dreaming that the law was restrained only to
magicians, sorcerers, and enchanters, for otherwise,
if the word Maleficus signified what it most
naturally implies, every evil-doer, then drunkenness
and whoredom were to meet with the same capital
punishment as witchcraft. But why should I
squander away my time in a too tedious prosecution
of this topic, which if driven on to the utmost
would afford talk to eternity ? I aim herein at no
more than this, namely, that since those grave
doctors take such a swinging range and latitude, I,
who am but a smattering novice in divinity, may
have the larger allowance for any slips or mistakes.
Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses
these expressions, "Ye suffer fools gladly," apply-
ing it to himself; and again " As a fool receive
me," and " That which I speak, I speak not after

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 195

the Lord, but as it were foolishly ;" and in another
place " We are fools for Christ's sake." See how
thes$. commendations of Folly are equal to the
author of them, both great and sacred. The same
holy person does yet enjoin and command the
being«fool, as a virtue of all others most requisite
and ne^^sary, — for says he, " If any man seem to
be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that
he may be wise/' Thus St. Luke records, how our
Saviour, after his resurrection, j oined himself with
two of his disciples travelling to Emmaus, at his
first salutation he calls them fools, saying, "O
fools, and slow of heart to believe."

Nor may this seem strange in comparison to
what is yet farther delivered by St. Paul, who
adventures to attribute something of Folly even to
the all- wise God himself. " The foolishness of God
is wiser than men ;" in which text St. Origen
would not have the word foolishness any way
referred to men, or applicable to the same sense,
wherein is to be understood that other passage of
St. Paul, " The preaching of the cross to them that
perish, foolishness."

But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing

196 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

so many proofs, since this one may suffice for all,
namely, that in those mystical psalms wherein
David represents the type of Christ, it is there
acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession,
that even he himself was guilty of Folly ; " Thou,
O God, knowest my foolishness ?" Nor is it with-
out some reason that fools for their plainness and
sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable
to God Almighty. For as the princes of this
world have shrewdly suspected, and carried a
jealous eye over such of their subjects as were the
most observant, and deepest politicians ; for thus
Caesar was afraid of the plodding Cassius, and
Brutus, thinking himself secure enough from the
careless drinking Anthony ; Nero likewise mis-
trusted Seneca, and Dionysius would have been
willingly rid of Plato, whereas they can all put
greater confidence in such as are of less subtlety
and contrivance.

So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and
condemns the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does
expressly declare in these words, " God hath
chosen the foolish things of the world ;" and again,
" it pleased God by foolishness to save the world ;"

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 197

implying that by wisdom it could never have
been saved. Nay, God himself testifies as
much when he speaks by the mouth of his
prophet, " I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and bring to nought the understanding
of the learned." Again, our Saviour does solemnly
return his Father thanks for that he had " hidden
the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and re-
vealed them, to babes," i.e., to fools ; for the original
word vwiou, being opposed to <ro<t>ois, if one signify
wise, the other must foolish. To the same purpose
did our blessed Lord frequently condemn and up-
braid the scribes, pharisees, and lawyers, while he
carries himself kind and obliging to the unlearned
multitude. For what otherwise can be the mean-
ing of that tart denunciation, "Woe unto you
scribes and pharisees," then woe unto you wise
men, whereas he seems chiefly delighted with
children, women, and illiterate fishermen.

We may farther take notice, that among all the
several kinds of brute creatures he shews greatest
liking to such as are farthest distant from the
subtlety of the fox. Thus in his progress to
Jerusalem he chooses to ride sitting upon an

198 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

ass, though, if he pleased, he might have mounted
the back of a lion with more of state, and as little
of danger. The Holy Spirit chose rather likewise
to descend from heaven in the shape of a simple
gall-less dove, than that of an eagle, kite, or other
more lofty fowl.

Thus all along in the holy scriptures there are
frequent metaphors and similitudes of the most
inoffensive creatures, such as stags, hinds, lambs,
and the like. Nay, those blessed souls that in
the day of judgment are to be placed at our
Saviour's right hand are called sheep, which are
the most senseless and stupid of all cattle, as
is evidenced by Aristotle's Greek proverb,
a sheepishness of temper, i.e., a dull, blockish,
sleepy, unmanly humour. Yet of such a flock
Christ is not ashamed to profess himself the shep-
herd. Nay, he would not only have all his
proselytes termed sheep, but even he himself would
be called a lamb ; as when John the Baptist seeth
Jesus coming unto him, he saith, "Behold the
Lamb of God;" which same title is very often
given to our Saviour in the apocalypse.

All this amounts to no less than that all mortal

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 199

men are fools, even the righteous and godly as well
as sinners ; nay, in some sense our blessed Lord
himself, who, although he was " the wisdom of the
Father," yet to repair the infirmities of fallen man,
he became in some measure a partaker of human
Folly, when he "took our nature upon him, and
was found in fashion as a man;" or when "God
made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in
him." Nor would he heal those breaches our sins
had made by any other method than by the
"foolishness of the cross," published by the ig-
norant and unlearned apostles, to whom he fre-
quently recommends the excellence of Folly, cau-
tioning them against the infectiousness of wisdom,
by the several examples he proposes them to
imitate, such as children, lilies, sparrows, mustard,
and such like beings, which are either wholly in-
animate, or at least devoid of reason and ingenuity,
guided by no other conduct than that of instinct,
without care, trouble, or contrivance.

To the same intent the disciples were warned by
their lord and master, that when they should be
"brought unto the synagogues, and unto magis-

200 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

trates and powers," they shall " take no thought
how, or what thing they should answer, nor what
they should say." They were again strictly forbid
to " enquire into the times and seasons," or to place
any confidence in their own abilities, but to depend
wholly upon divine assistance.

At the first peopling of paradise the Almighty
had never laid so strict a charge on our father
Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of know-
Jedge except he had thereby forewarned that the
--taste of knowledge would be the bane of all happi-
ness. St. Paul says expressly, that knowledge
puffeth up, i.e., it is fatal and poisonous. In pur-
suance whereunto St. Bernard interprets that ex-
ceeding high mountain whereon the devil had
erected his seat to have been the mountain of
knowledge. And perhaps this may be another
argument which ought not to be omitted, namely,
that Folly is acceptable, at least excusable, with
the gods, inasmuch as they easily pass by the
heedless failures of fools, while the miscarriages of
such as are known to have more wit shall very
hardly obtain a pardon. Nay, when a wise man
comes to sue for an acquitment from any guilt, he

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 201

must shroud himself under the patronage and pre-
text of Folly.

For thus in the twelfth of Numbers Aaron en-
treats Moses to stay the leprosy of his sister Miriam,
saying, " Alas, my Lord, I beseech thee lay not the
sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly." Thus,
when David spared Saul's life, when he found him
sleeping in a tent of Hachilah, not willing to stretch
forth his hand against the Lord's anointed. Saul
excuses his former severity by confessing, " Behold,
I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly."
David also himself in much the same form begs the
remission of his sin from God Almighty with this
prayer, " Lord, I pray thee take away the iniquity
of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly ; " as
if he could not have hoped otherwise to have his
pardon granted except he petitioned for it under
the covert and mitigation of Folly.

The agreeable practice of our Saviour is yet more
convincing, who, when he hung upon the cross,
prayed for his enemies, saying, " Father, forgive
them," urging no other plea in their behalf than
that of their ignorance, " for they know not what
they do." To the same effect St. Paul in his first

13

202 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

epistle to Timothy acknowledges he had been a
blasphemer and a persecutor, " But," saith he, "I
obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in un-
belief." Now what is the meaning of the phrase, I
did it ignorantly, but only this ? My fault was
occasioned from a misinformed Folly, not from a
deliberate malice. What signifies " I obtained
mercy" but only that I should not otherwise have
obtained it had not folly and ignorance been my
vindication ?

To the same purpose is that other passage in the
mysterious Psalmist, which I forgot to mention in
its proper place, namely, " Oh remember not the
sins and offences of my youth ! >J the word which
we render offences, is in Latin ignorantias, ignor-
ances. Observe, the two things he alleges in his
excuse are, first, his rawness of age, to which Folly
and want of experience are constant attendants :
and secondly, his ignorances, expressed in the plural
number for an enhancement and aggravation of his
foolishness.

But that I may not wear out this subject too far,
to draw now towards a conclusion, it is observable
that the Christian religion seems to have some rela-

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 203

tion to Folly, and no alliance at all with wisdom.
Of the truth whereof, if you desire farther proof
than my bare word you may please, first, to consider,
that children, women, old men, and fools, led as it
were by a secret impulse of nature, are always most
constant in repairing to church, and most zealous,
devout and attentive in the performance of the
several parts of divine service. Nay, the first pro-
mulgators of the gospel, and the first converts to
Christianity, were men of plainness and simplicity,
wholly unacquainted with secular policy or learning.
Farther, there are none more silly, or nearer
their wits' end, than those who are too supersti-
tiously religious. They are profusely lavish in their
charity ; they invite fresh affronts by an easy for-
giveness of past injuries ; they suffer themselves to
be cheated and imposed upon by laying claim to
the innocence of the dove ; they make it the interest
of no person to oblige them, because they will love,
and do good to their enemies, as much as to the
most endearing friends ; they banish all pleasure,
feeding upon the penance of watching, weeping,
fasting, sorrow and reproach ; they value not their
lives, but with St. Paul, wish to be dissolved, and

204 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

covet the fiery trial of martyrdom. In a word,
they seem altogether so destitute of common sense,
that their soul seems already separated from the
dead and inactive body.

And what else can we imagine all this to be than
downright madness ? It is the less strange there-
fore that at the feast of Pentecost the apostles
should be thought drunk with new wine ; or that
St. Paul was censured by Festus to have been be-
side himself.

And since I have had the confidence to go thus
far, I shall venture yet a little further, and be so
bold as to say thus much more. All that final
happiness, which christians, through so many rubs
and briars of difficulties, contend for, is at last no
better than a sort of folly and madness. This, no
question, will be thought extravagantly spoke ; but
consider awhile, and deliberately state the case.

First, then, the christians so far agree with the
Platonists as to believe that the body is no better
than a prison or dungeon for the confinement of
the soul. That therefore, while the soul is
shackled to the walls of flesh, her soaring wings are
impeded, and all her enlivening faculties clogged

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 205

and fettered by the gross particles of matter, so
that she can neither freely range after, nor, when
happily overtook, can quietly contemplate her
proper object of truth.

Farther, Plato defines philosophy to be the
meditation of death, because the one performs the
same office with the other ; namely, withdraws the
mind from all visible and corporeal objects. There-
fore, while the soul does patiently actuate the
several organs and members of the body, so long is
a man accounted of a good and sound disposition ;
but when the soul, weary of her confinement,
struggles to break jail, and fly beyond her cage of
flesh and blood, then a man is censured at least for
being magotty and crack-brained ; nay, if there be
any defect in the external organs it is then termed
downright madness.

And yet many times persons thus affected shall
have prophetic ecstacies of foretelling things to
come, shall in a rapture talk languages they never
before learned, and seem in all things actuated by
somewhat divine and extraordinary ; and all this,
no doubt, is only the effect of the soul's being more
released from its engagement to the body, whereby

206 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

it can with less impediment exert the energy of life
and motion. From hence, no question, has sprung
an observation of like nature, confirmed now into a
settled opinion, that some long-experienced souls
in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the
height of prophetic spirits.

If this disorder arise from an intemperance in
religion/ and too high a strain of devotion, though
it be of a somewhat differing sort, yet it is so near
akin to the former, that a great part of mankind
apprehend it as a mere madness ; especially when
persons of that superstitious humour are so prag-
maticaFand singular as to separate and live apart,
as it were, from all the Avorld beside. So as they
seem to have experienced what Plato dreams to
have happened between some, who, enclosed in a
dark cave, did only ruminate on the ideas and
abstracted speculations of entities ; and one other
of their company, who had got abroad into the open
light, and at his return tells them what a blind
mistake they had lain under. That he had seen
the substance of what their dotage of imagination
reached only in shadow ; that therefore he could
not but pity and condole their deluding dreams,

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 207

while they on the other side no less bewail his
frenzy, and turn him out of their society for a
lunatic and madman.

Thus the vulgar are wholly taken up with those
objects that are most familiar to their senses, be-
yond which they are apt to think all is but fairy-
land ; while those that are devoutly religious scorn
to set their thoughts or affections on any things
below, but mount their soul to the pursuit of incor-
poreal and invisible beings. The former, in their
marshalling the requisites of happiness, place riches
in the front, the endowments of the body in the
next rank, and leave the accomplishments of the
soul to bring up the rear ; nay, some will scarce
believe there is any such thing at all as the soul,
because they cannot literally see a reason of their
faith ; while the other pay their first fruits of service
tothat most simple and incomprehensible Being,
God, employ themselves next in providing for the
happiness of that which comes nearest to their im-
mortal soul, being not at all mindful of their corrupt
bodily carcases, and slighting money as the dirt and
rubbish of the world ; or if at any time some urging
occasions require them to become entangled in

208 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

secular affairs, they do it with regret, and a kind
of ill-will, observing what St. Paul advises his
Corinthians, having wives, and yet being as though
they had none ; buying, and yet remaining as though
they possessed not.

There are between these two sorts of persons
many differences in several other respects. As first,
though all the senses have the same mutual relation
to the body, yet some are more gross than others ;
as those five corporeal ones, of touching, hearing,
smelling, seeing, tasting, whereas some again are
more refined, and less adulterated with matter ;
such are the memory, the understanding, and the
will. Now the mind will be always most ready
and expedite at that to which it is naturally most
inclined. Hence is it that a pious soul, employing
all its power and abilities in the pressing after such
things as are farthest removed from sense, is per-
fectly stupid and brutish in the management of
any worldly affairs ; while on the other side, the
vulgar are so intent upon their business and em-
ployment, that they have not time to bestow one
poor thought upon a future eternity. From such
ardour of divine meditation was it that Saint

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 209

Bernard in his study drank oil instead of wine, and
yet his thoughts were so taken up that he never
observed the mistake.

Farther, among the passions of the soul, some
have a greater communication with the body than
others ; as lust, the desire of meat and sleep, anger,
pride, and envy ; with these the pious man is in
continual war, and irreconcileable enmity, while
the vulgar cherish and foment them as the best
comforts of life.

There are other affections of a middle nature,
common and innate to every man ; such are love to
one's country, duty to parents, love to children,
kindness to friends, and such like ; to these the
vulgar pay some respect, but the religious endea-
vour to supplant and eradicate from their soul,
except they can raise and sublimate them to the
most refined pitch of virtue ; so as to love or
honour their parents, not barely under that cha-
racter, for what did they do more than generate a
body ? Nay, even for that we are primarily be-
holden to God, the first parent of all mankind, but
as good men only, upon whom is imprinted the
lively image of that divine nature, which they

210 THE PRAISE OF POLL Y.

esteem as the chief and only good, beyond whom
nothing deserves to be beloved, nothing desired.

By the same rule they measure all the other
offices or duties of life ; in each of which, whatever
is earthly and corporeal, shall, if not wholly re-
jected, yet at least be put behind what faith makes
the substance of things not seen. Thus in the
sacraments, and all other acts of religion, they make
a difference between the outward appearance or
body of them, and the more inward soul or spirit.
As to instance, in fasting, they think it very in-
effectual to abstain from flesh, or debar themselves
of a meal's meat, which yet is all the vulgar under-
stand by his duty, unless they likewise restrain
their passions, subdue their anger, and mortify
their pride ; that the soul being thus disengaged
from the entanglement of the body, may have a
better relish to spiritual objects, and take an ante-
past of heaven.

Thus, say they, in the holy Eucharist, though
the outward form and ceremonies are not wholly to
be despised, yet are these prejudicial, at least un-
profitable, if as bare signs only they are riot accom-
panied with the thing signified, which is the body

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 211

and blood of Christ, whose death, till his second
coming, we are hereby to represent by the van-
quishing and burying our vile affections that they
may arise to a newness of life, and be united first
to each other, then all to Christ.

These are the actions and meditations of the
truly pious person ; while the vulgar place all
their religion in crowding up close to the altar, in
listening to the words of the priest, and in being
very circumspect at the observance of each trifling
ceremony. Nor is it in such cases only as we have
here given for instances, but through his whole course
of life, that the pious man, without any regard to
the baser materials of the body, spends himself
wholly in a fixed intentness upon spiritual, invisible,
and eternal objects.

Now since these persons stand off, and keep at so
wide a distance between themselves, it is customary
for them both to think each other mad. And were
I to give my opinion to which of the two the name
does most properly belong, I should, I confess, ad-
judge it to the religious ; of the reasonableness
whereof you may be farther convinced if I proceed
to demonstrate what I formerly hinted at, namely,

212 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

that that ultimate happiness which religion pro-
poses is no other than some sort of madness.

First, therefore, Plato dreamed somewhat of this
nature when he tells us that the madness of lovers
was of all other dispositions of the body most desir-
able ; for he who is once thoroughly smitten with
this passion, lives no longer within himself, but has
removed his soul to the same place where he has
settled his affections, and loses himself to find the
object he so much dotes upon. This straying now,
and wandering of a soul from its own mansion, what
is it better than a plain transport of madness ?
What else can be the meaning of those proverbial
phrases, " he is not himself; " " recover yourself; "
and "he is come again to himself?" And accord-
ingly as love is more hot and eager, so is the mad-
ness thence ensuing more incurable, and yet more
happy.

Now what shall be that future happiness of
glorified saints, which pious souls here on earth so
earnestly groan for, but only that the spirit, as the
more potent and prevalent victor, shall over-master
and swallow up the body ; and that the more easily.
Because while here below, the several members, by

j

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THE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 213

being mortified, and kept in subjection, were the
better prepared for this separating change ; and
afterward the spirit itself shall be lost, and drowned
in the abyss of beatific vision, so as the whole man
will be then perfectly beyond all its own bounds,
and be no otherwise happy, than as transported
into ecstasy and wonder, it feels some unspeakable
influence from that omnipotent Being, which makes
all things completely blessed, by assimilating them
to his own likeness.

Now although this happiness be then only con-
summated, when souls at the general resurrection
shall be re-united to their bodies, and both be
clothed with immortality ; yet because a religious
life is but a continued meditation upon, and as it
were a transcript of the joys of heaven, therefore to
such persons there is allowed some relish and fore-
taste of that pleasure here, which is to be their re-
ward hereafter. And although this indeed be but
a small pittance of satisfaction compared with that
future inexhaustible fountain of blessedness, yet
does it abundantly over-balance all worldly delights,
were they all in conjunction set off to their best
advantage ; so great is the precedency of spiritual

214 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

things before corporeal, of invisible before material
and visible.

This is what the apostle gives an eloquent
description of. where he says by way of encour-
agement, that " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man to con-
ceive those things which God hath prepared for
them that love him." This likewise is that better
part which Mary chose, which shall not be taken
from her, but perfected and completed by her
mortal putting on immortality.

Now those who are thus devoutly affected,
though few there are so, undergo somewhat of
strange alteration, which very nearly approaches to
madness ; they speak many things at an abrupt
and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by
some possessing demon ; they make an inarticulate
noise, without any distinguishable sense or mean-
ing. They sometimes screw and distort their faces
to uncouth and antic looks ; a.t one time beyond
measure cheerful, then as immoderately sullen; now
sobbing, then laughing, and soon after sighing, as
if they were perfectly distracted, and out of their
senses.

rlHE PRAISE OF FOLLY. 215

If they have any sober intervals of coming to
themselves again, like St. Paul they then con-
fess, that they were caught up they know not
where, whether in the body, or out of the body,
they cannot tell ; as if they had been in a dead
sleep or trance, they remember nothing of what
they have heard, seen, said, or done. This they
only know, that their past delusion was a most
desirable happiness ; that therefore they bewail
nothing more than the loss of it, nor wish for any
greater joy than the quick return of it, and more
durable abode for ever. And this, as I have said,
is the foretaste or anticipation of future blessedness.

But I doubt I have forgot myself, and have
already transgressed the^rmmd^jpf modesty. How-
ever, if I have said anything too confidently or
impertinently, be pleased to consider that it was
spoke by Folly, and that unHer the person of a
woman ; yet at the same time remembes the appli-
cableness of that Greek proverb :—

A fool of fc speaks a seasonable truth :

Unless you will be so witty as to object that this
makes no apology for me, because the word

216 THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.

signifies a man, not a woman, and consequently my
sex debars me from the benefit of that observation.
I perceive now, that, for a concluding treat, you
expect a formal epilogue, and the summing up of
all in a brief recitation ; but I will assure you, you
are grossly mistaken if you suppose that after such
a hodge-podge medley of speech I should be able to
recollect anything I have delivered. Beside, as it
is an old proverb, " I hate a pot-companion with a
good memory ; " so indeed I may as truly say, " I
hate a hearer that will carry any thing away with
him." Wherefore, in short : —

Farewell ! live long, drink deep, be jolly,
Ye most illustrious votaries of folly !

THE END.

PRINTED BY ALEXANDER GARDNER, PAISLEY.

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